


orange you glad

by vowelinthug



Series: orange [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Oranges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2018-09-06 14:31:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8756299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vowelinthug/pseuds/vowelinthug
Summary: tumblr fics set after "st. augustine is that way"i should have come up with a better title





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it's raining out and silver has breakfast in bed

* * *

 

Flint dreamt of cannon fire, and awoke with a start at the same time he heard a loud boom outside and a heavy weight pressed down on his back. He panicked for a moment, gripping a sword that wasn’t there, ready to roll over and strike, when a tattooed hand encircled his wrist, pinning him to the bed. A voice above him said, “Good morning, darling.”

The panic left him immediately, and was replaced with irritation. Silver still held him by the wrist and seemed to have no intention of letting up. Flint managed to turn his head on the pillow to the other side to glare. “What are you still doing in bed?” he asked. “What’s the hour?”

Their room held a queer light, neither day nor night. A greyish haze colored the air and for a moment Flint thought he was dreaming still, until he heard another thunderous crash outside. 

“It’s your regular hour,” said Silver. Flint could feel the leg that was half gone slip between his thighs. “But I knew you’d still go out into the grove even in this weather and catch your death or get struck by lightning, and then I’d have to take care of the children all by myself.” 

Last month three of the feral cats had given birth within days of each other. Silver had nearly killed at least half of the kittens because they liked to use his crutch as a scratching post and never noticed them at his foot. He had to give them all a different name every day because he kept forgetting what he called them. 

“I have to work,” Flint said into his pillow.

Silver scoffed. “You can go a  _day_  without picking bloody oranges. We can skip a trade.”

“ _You_  have to work.”

“That’s later,” he said, but eased his grip on Flint’s wrist.  “The rain will’ve stopped by then. Probably. ”

Without ceremony, Silver flattened himself alongside Flint’s back, huffing into his neck like a rabid dog. It made all the hair on Flint’s body stand on end. He felt Silver’s fingers trail down his side. 

“I never would have thought I’d find a long white nightshirt so appealing,” Silver murmured, slipping his hand under the hem and cupping Flint’s ass. “Such easy access, all soft and warm. Like fondling a sweet maiden beneath her petticoat.”

Flint’s hips started to rise of their own volition as Silver massaged his ass cheek, scratching lightly, hard squeezing one moment and then tender, soothing caresses the next. Flint was already half-hard when Silver took his ear into his mouth, and he gripped his pillow with both hands, groaning loudly. 

So loud he almost missed the piercing yell at the side of the bed. Flint froze, as did the hand on his ass. Flint turned to see big green eyes in a black face staring solemnly at them in the dim room. Then the cat meowed again, a horrible, drawn-out scream. It knew better than to get on the bed, but it didn’t know when to quit begging for food. 

Flint sighed. “Get off me, Silver.”

Silver sighed as well, sliding off him. “You’re right. Mustn’t in front of the kids. Damn you, Bones.”

Not long after he’d arrived, Silver had named the older cats after old  _Walrus_  crew members, which were the only named he remembered. Except this cat Bones, with his wide eyes and his mouth that never knew went to close, seemed to Flint to resemble another old member of his crew. 

Flint rolled to his side and peered at Silver. The room was slightly brighter now, and he could better make out Silver’s long hair looking damp with sweat and curling down over his bare shoulders, and the stained breeches that hung low on his waist, giving Flint blessed views of the expanse of him, the old scars, the muddied tattoos, the collection of wiry hair on his belly. 

He’d shifted to prop himself up on the headboard so Flint had to look up at him. Flint had been using the headboard to practice his woodwork, attempting to carve flowers and vines into the smooth oak, and he’d done a good enough job. They looked like flowers anyway, albeit a bit jagged and sharp. But then one morning while he’d been out in the grove Silver had taken his knife and finished it, except instead of flowers he’d etched a crudely drawn naked mermaid in the center, although the tail looked more like a massive lobster claw. He’d told Flint, when he’d proudly showed it off, that he’d never before carved anything in his life. 

“I’ve decided to name all the children either Solomon or Little, so I’ll remember it.” 

“That’s smart,” said Flint.

Silver held in one hand his knife, which he had procured from -  _somewhere_. He also held an orange. He started cutting it into sections. “I brought you breakfast,” he said. “Hey, when’s your birthday?”

Flint blinked. “The fifteenth of March. Why?”

“The ides of March.” Silver said. “Seriously? Have you ever strained yourself from being so predictable? Does that make me Brutus or Cassius?”

Flint brushed Silver’s rib. “ _Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look_ ,” he said. “ _He thinks too much: such men are dangerous_.”

“Okay, enough flattery,” said Silver. “I’ve killed you once already and I’ve found I haven’t the taste for it.” Then he frowned. “March was two months ago. You didn’t say anything.”

Flint shrugged. He’d only remembered himself halfway through the day and was then too embarrassed to say anything. They’d spent the day like usual, picking oranges and sitting in the taberna. Silver had coincidentally cooked a pig exactly the way Flint liked it. Then that evening Silver had been walking across the porch when one of the cats had randomly struck out, digging his claw so deep into Silver’s skin Flint had to bandage it while Silver moaned about losing the other leg. Flint had eaten him out afterwards to distract him. He’d had worst birthdays. 

“I do have to get to work,” Flint said instead. 

“Look what one of the boys in town showed me,” said Silver. He shoved a sliver of orange in his mouth until his lips covered it. His face was puckered for a second before he grinned, mouth full of peel. 

Flint stared at him, saying nothing. Outside the rain splattered hard on the roof, on the leaves of his trees. The moments between each thunderclap shortened. The storm was right overhead, which meant it probably would stop by the time Silver had to leave for work. 

Silver pulled it out with a loud sucking sound, and all that came out was the rind. He swallowed the meat of the orange and then used the knife to pick the pulp caught between his teeth. 

“Why do I love you again?” Flint asked without thinking. 

Silver didn’t answer, didn’t look at him. He busied himself with breaking up the orange into even smaller wedges, his cheeks pink. He didn’t give Flint any orange. 

“I thought you were bringing  _me_  breakfast,” Flint said. 

“I did,” Silver said, pointing to his crotch with his knife. 

“That’s what I had for dinner last night,” said Flint, rolling his eyes. “Perhaps I want a little variety.”

“Then you should grow something besides fucking oranges.”

But Silver held out a slice of orange without any rind. Flint reached for it but Silver pulled it back. Flint dropped his hand with a sigh and let Silver slip the wedge into his mouth, his thumb dragging unnecessarily on Flint’s bottom lip. Flint shivered. It continued to rain. Silver went back and forth, eating a piece of orange and feeding another piece to Flint. 

Flint had little to be proud of in his lifetime, but it was a damn fine orange.

When they’d finished it, Silver dumped the peel and his knife on the floor, rolled towards Flint, and stuck his sticky fingers into his mouth. Flint sucked the tang off every whorl in his hardened skin, but then he pulled back as Silver shifted closer.

“I really need to start working,” he said. 

Silver raised an eyebrow just as a particularly loud thunder boomed overhead. 

“Sure,” said Silver, leaning back against the headboard. “I’ll just do what I always do when you’re out.” He unlaced his trousers.

Silver only joined him in the grove when he was working closer to the house. The further back Flint went to pick, the less likely it was Silver would make the effort to walk it. Flint had assumed Silver just stayed behind and read, or dozed in the chair, or bothered the cats. 

He didn’t know why he didn’t think Silver jerked off in his bed. In retrospect, of all the scenarios that was definitely the more likely.

Flint watched Silver’s hand slowly moving on his cock. He was only half-hard, pulling the foreskin back over the head to reveal the shining head. He used his other hand to gather the precome gathering at the slit and brought it back to Flint’s mouth. The taste of Silver mixed with the tartness of the fruit faded too quickly, and then it was just the salt of his skin lingering on his tongue. 

Silver waited until his hand was completely wet before pulling away from Flint’s mouth, used the spit to slick up his cock. He planted his foot on the bed and angled his hips towards Flint, giving him a clear view. His hips thrusts were shallow, in pace with the slide of his hand.

“I like to lie here when you’re out in the grove, thinking about how hot you get when you work,” Silver said breathlessly. “Covered in sweat, stretching your body to reach the tallest limbs, your muscles moving. Sometimes I do this face down, rutting into your sheets, my ass in the air, so I can smell you better.” 

“Fuck.” Flint didn’t know where to look - his wet, pink cock or his wet, pink lips, the vein twitching in his belly and in his arm, the flex of his inner thigh or his neck. He didn’t touch himself, but he felt the front of his nightshirt dampen where his own cock was leaking at the sight.

“I think about all that skin,  _oh_ ,” said Silver, his other hand curling into the sheet. “The way you blush all the way down. Lift your gown, beautiful, let me see you, please.” 

Flint’s cheeks were hot as he clumsily tugged his shirt up to his armpits without sitting up. It had taken many years at sea before the sun could completely mask the way his skin blotched when his blood was pumping, and though he still spent part of his days outdoors, it wasn’t enough to stop the paleness from fading back into his complexion. And with that brought the freckles, and the flush. 

“Oh,  _darling_.” Silver’s hand sped up, watching him. He swayed forward slightly, mouth open, like he wanted to kiss Flint’s chest. “So fucking pretty. Fuck, I usually have to imagine this but here you are, all spread out just for me, so  _red_  and hard and waiting for me. Are you dripping for me?”

“Silver,” Flint moaned, still gripping the edge of his shirt. “ _Please_.”

Silver swore, rolled up onto his free arm. They still weren’t touching but now Silver was almost hovering over him, his wrist pumping furiously a couple more times before he spilled out all over Flint, hot ropes of come covering his cock and exposed stomach. But Flint was watching Silver’s face over him, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth opened in a drawn-out whine. 

Silver’s eyes opened just a crack as he moved his hips forwards, running his spent cock once along Flint’s rigid length. 

“Please,” Flint said again, seconds from rubbing himself off on Silver’s thigh. “ _Fuck_ , Silver, please.”

Silver wordlessly slid down the bed, his trousers still bunched around his thighs. He tongued at his own come on Flint’s stomach, making Flint jump forward with a wild groan. He trailed downward, pressing open kisses into his skin and nuzzling the tangle of hair around his cock. He licked all over Flint’s skin, cleaning him, before swallowing him down. 

Flint pumped his hips shallowly into Silver’s mouth, cupping the back of his head and holding his hair back so he could still see his face. He watched the impression of his cock through Silver’s cheek, the way his eyes bore into Flint’s, somehow both glazed in lust and focused entirely on him. Silver’s tongue pulsed along the vein, rippling like waves, and Flint tried to tell him he was close, he did, but he choked on the words as Silver pulled back, wrapped his lips around the head and  _sucked_. Flint came with a shout, crazed, his brain still tripping on the name so it was just a static stream of  _Sssssss_. 

Silver held Flint in his mouth for a moment, suckling gently, until Flint moaned weakly, his hips twitching, and then he let him go. He shimmied back up the bed, collapsing next to Flint with a heavy breath. 

“And that,” Silver said, “is how I spend  _my_  mornings.”

Flint threw an elbow over his eyes, and groaned in time with another roll of thunder outside. He couldn’t catch his breath. His mind was still mostly gray fog, a haze that made him question for real whether he was, in fact, actually dreaming. He normally got at least a few minutes by himself in the morning to prepare to deal with Silver. He said, “I barely got any breakfast.”

He heard Silver sigh. “Still a tyrant.” Flint felt him shift, and he removed his arm to watch him. Silver never failed to fascinate, the way he shuffled his trousers back over his slim waist without standing, the way he ran his hand through his long hair, which was beginning to match his name at the temple. He mesmerized Flint the way a flame mesmerizes. 

“When’s your birthday?” Flint asked.

Silver stopped reaching for his crutch and looking at Flint over his shoulder. He shrugged. “Summer, sometime. Not too sure. One year I picked a day in June, and then every year since I made it the day after the previous year. I thought that would make me live forever, though I can’t quite remember the logic behind it now.”

Flint touched Silver’s back, just over the old knife wound. “We met in the summertime,” he said.

The smile he gave Flint was dark and heated, but then it disappeared when Flint sat up in bed. “No, you lie back. I’ll grab us some food.”

Flint frowned. “I’m covered in sweat, spunk, and orange juice. I need a wash.”

“I left some clothes in a bucket when I went outside,” Silver said. He gave Flint a rushed, toothy kiss that mostly missed his mouth and then push on Flint’s shoulder. “I’ll go get them, stay.”

Silver smiled at him easily as he grabbed his crutch and he made his way to the door. Flint immediately went on guard.

“Why do you want me to stay here?” His eyes darted from Silver to the closed door. “Why did you go outside earlier?”

“No reason.” Silver’s smile wasn’t nearly as distracting enough to mask the loud crash that resounded in the front room.

“Silver. Did you bring some of the cats inside out of the rain?”

“Of course not.”

An even louder crash was heard, followed by the sound of several books falling, animal hisses and spits, and tiny feet thudding on the stone floor.

“Did you bring  _all_  of the cats inside out of the rain?” 

“Well I wasn’t going to just pick some of them to stay dry,” Silver said, opening the door. “I’m not a monster. I mean, not anymore.” 

The storm sounded like it was starting to move, so without the thunder overhead, the closed door, or Silver panting in his ear, the sound of over two fucking dozen cats meowing, hissing, and destroying his home was perfectly audible. 

“It’s probably just Joji and Logan scraping again,” Silver called as he darted out the room faster than any man on one leg should have been able to move. “Tea?”

“Coffee!” Flint shouted back. “You fucking bastard!” 

He fell back on the bed with an angry sigh, and stared up at the ceiling. He tried to block out the noise of the dirty, flea-ridden beasts invading his home and the idiotic man he loved trying to reason with them.

The bed shifted, and he saw Bones the cat had joined him on the bed. For once it had nothing to say, but stared at Flint with that wide expression before settling in beside him. The cat folded its arms beneath its chest, closed its eyes, and began to purr.

After a moment, Flint scratched under its chin.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> actually part of the [silverflint hurt/comfort mixtape](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8741533/chapters/20040673) but it fits better over here
> 
> prompt: _17\. “I don’t know where I am. Help me”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for El <3

* * *

 

Flint had never dealt with a hurricane on land. The storms he’d weathered on ships had been frightening, ferocious things, and he’d nearly lost his life on more than one occasion, but it was still preferable to this. At least he’d had things to do. 

Sitting in the small cellar beneath his house, ceilings too low to even stand, listening to the storm tearing apart his orange grove with absolutely nothing to stop it – it was a nightmare.

“It’ll be fine,” said Silver. He had yet to let go of Flint’s wrist. “The wind’s just going to knock all the oranges from their branches, and you’ll just have less work to do.”

“That’s the  _opposite_  of what I want,” Flint said.

Silver thought about that. “Well, picking them all up off the ground will take a lot of time, most likely.” 

Flint did feel better. For a moment.

“I hope the money doesn’t get blown away,” he said idly, listening to the thin wooden door above them rattle with the wind.

Silver said nothing, but it took Flint tugging at his shirt with both hands and the two dozen cats screaming at his foot to get him to sit back down and not go racing into the storm.

The next morning was clear and bright, with no clouds in the sky. A few birds were singing. Flint wanted to burn it all down. 

It actually wasn’t that bad. The trees closer to the house were mostly upright, with a few exceptions. He could see further back into the grove, however, there were a lot more fallen trees. Oranges covered the ground. It would be a lot of work to clean up, but it didn’t seem like the peaceful kind of work he normally preferred. 

“The house looks fine,” Silver said, coming up behind him. “You’re going to look around?”

Flint nodded. “You don’t want to come with? Check on the chest?”

Silver shrugged. He didn’t actually know where the money was, despite how many times Flint had offered to show him. “That looks like a lot of things to climb over. I think I’ll pass. I’m going to head into town, check on Lua and the taberna.”

“There’s probably a lot of debris on the roads as well.”

Silver shrugged again. “I’ll see how far I get, then.” He pulled on one corner of Flint’s mustache, twisting it with a little smile. “Be safe.” 

Flint watched until Silver disappeared from sight up the road before heading into the grove. The oranges were either totally fine or utterly pulverized, nothing in between. He picked one up to eat as he walked. Most of what lay on the ground were fallen branches, whole sides of trees splintering off from the other. The further back he headed, though, the wind must have been rougher. More trees had been kicked up by the storm but still seemed complete, and after inspecting their roots he figured he’d probably have no trouble replanting most of them.

When he got to the end of the grove, he saw something that made him start. About a kilometer away there was usually a large cypress tree making the end of his territory, and it was still there. Except now it rested completely on its side. 

As he approached, he marvelled at the odds. A gust of wind had been powerful enough to knock this towering figure completely out the ground while his orange trees, which looked spindly and thin beside it, were mostly unharmed. It made no sense. God had put this tree here, and Flint had put his trees there. What made his so much stronger than God’s?

He’d make sure not to voice that thought aloud, though. Silver accused him of having a God complex enough as it was.

He stared at the top of the cypress, at an angle he’d never expect to see it. The thing looked even more massive from the side. He didn’t know if it was his responsibility to get rid of it but had the terrible suspicion it was. He walked around the branches to see the bottom, the massive hole in the ground where the roots had been torn. They stood up in the air like a great sea beast, lifeless, dirt still falling from the wood in the soft breeze, and it was this maudlin thought that caused him not to notice the ground shifting beneath his feet until he’d already started to fall.

Flint thought he might have blacked out for a second, but couldn’t be sure. All he knew was one moment he’d been standing up, surveying the scene, and the next he was on his back in a puddle of piss-warm rainwater, staring up at the cloudless blue sky from inside a massive hole.

He’d definitely had dreams like this before.

Except in the dreams he hadn’t hurt as much, specifically in his head and in his  _leg, fuck_. He hobbled over to a mound of dirt absent of rainwater and gingerly pulled off his boot. He gently pressed along the swelling skin of his ankle but didn’t feel any breaks. Thank Christ. 

He looked around. The hole, which was more of a pit, was only about nine feet deep, and maybe double that across. The sides were pretty steep, though, like the wind had lifted the tree straight up out the ground before dropping it on its side, rather than dragging it out. He tried a few times to jump for one of the lower hanging roots, but every time he landed on his twisted ankle he saw stars, and he thought he might puke. 

He sat back down, feeling nauseous, cursing himself. He’d swum through the Atlantic and climbed aboard a tall-ass fucking  _warship_  with a goddamn bullet hole in his shoulder, and he couldn’t climb out of a damn hole with a fucked up foot? He felt pathetic.

But he’d been a younger man then, and so alone, and so  _angry_ , and his loneliness and his anger at everything that had been trying so hard to kill him had only made him more determined to survive. He’d been in agony but he’d persevered just to spite everyone. 

Now, he wasn’t alone. He was angry, but he wasn’t alone. He knew Silver would find him, eventually. He told himself he shouldn’t do anything that could risk hurting himself more, but he  _hated_  just sitting there, waiting.

Silver found him eventually.

Flint had no idea how long he sat there but it felt like a long time before he heard, “Flint! Flint! Where the fuck are you!”

Even through the relief of Silver finally showing up, Flint still felt annoyed he was screaming Flint’s  _actual name_  where  _anyone_  could hear and  _anyone_  could stumble on the dreaded, fearsome Captain Flint stuck in a hole. 

“Flint!” Silver called, and was his voice getting fainter? “Flint, you fuck!”

“Silver!” Because, fuck it, at least that was  _close_  enough to Silver’s alias. “Silver, over here!”

Silence, and then, slightly closer, “Flint? Where the fuck are you!”

Flint looked around, at the dirt and the roots and the water. Hell, maybe? “I don’t know!” he shouted, framing his mouth with his muddy hands. “I’m in the ground!”

Another long pause. “You’re  _where_?” 

“By the old cypress! Outside the grove! Just. Fucking -  _help me_!”

Flint stared up at the big, gaping mouth of the hole, and he couldn’t see anything but sky. He couldn’t hear anything but wind. He brought his hands back up to his mouth. “Sil–!”

Silver appeared at the top of the pit. He looked sweaty and disheveled and like he might have been panicking for some time. He wisely hadn’t approached the very edge.

“What the  _fuck_?” he said, still out of breath. “Are you stuck?”

Flint still hadn’t stood up. “My leg,” he said. “I hurt it.”

Silver stared at him for a long time. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” said Flint.

Silver continued to stare. Then, he said, “Which leg?”

“What the fu– _the right one_.”

…

“Are you  _fucking_  kidding me?”

“Will you just,” Flint gritted his teeth, “fucking. Help me.”

“How do you suppose I do that?”

“Go back to the house,” said Flint. “There you’ll find a shovel. Just move some of that dirt there over my corpse once I starve down here and  _die_.”

“Stop being ridiculous,” said Silver. “I can always drop food down to you.”

Silver looked around, frown heavy on his face. He was probably thinking every thought Flint had already had while waiting for him to show up. The nearest other person was two kilometers away, and they didn’t have a horse. The nearest doctor was at the fort, and Silver couldn’t just walk in there, nor did Flint have any way of getting there himself, when he got out of the hole, because they didn’t have a horse. He had no way of getting into town at all, because Silver couldn’t push him in the cart, and they didn’t have a horse to pull it. There were a few people they could trust who might know how to help, but they were even further away and the time it took Silver to find him suggested he wasn’t able to make it far up the road in its current state, because he didn’t have a horse to get him there.

“I told you we should have gotten a horse,” said Silver.

“I know,” said Flint.

“When this is over, we’re going to get a horse.”

Flint sighed but didn’t argue. He didn’t like keeping horses. They smelled bad and were costly, and once when he was a boy he’d seen one kick a man’s head in, which wasn’t something you just  _got over_  seeing. But if Silver could get him out of this godforsaken hole he’d buy him a whole fucking stampede of horses.

Silver looked around again, and then said, “I’ve got an idea. Wait right here.” 

The most annoying part was, he didn’t even say it ironically. 

He didn’t return for some time. Flint had started to get a little nervous, picturing Silver hurrying to get to him, tripping over a fallen branch and snapping his neck. When you’re stuck in a hole it’s easy to come up with every single stupid way a person could die, and Flint figured if they weren’t going to die violently, they would absolutely die stupidly. He often imagined Silver dying, because it was his nature to think of worst possible outcomes in life. Before Silver had showed up in his home, Flint had thought he could survive anything. In every imagination of Silver’s death, he never saw himself outliving the day. It felt like a millennia ago Silver had thought he might be Flint’s end, but Flint wasn’t ever going to give him the satisfaction of telling him he was right. 

Silver announced his return by nearly throwing a ladder at Flint’s head. 

“–the  _fuck_?” Flint yelled, falling backwards. 

Silver shot him that wide, closed-mouth smile. Flint loved him but there was nothing about that smile he didn’t want to punch. 

“Well, come on then,” Silver said. “Climb up.”

“With what fucking leg?” Flint said, awkwardly getting to his feet without putting any pressure on the right. “My ankle is twisted.”

Silver scoffed, waving his hand. “I used to climb onto a very tall ship with nothing but rope and an iron peg. You can climb up a single six foot ladder.”

“How the fuck do I do that, then?” But he picked up the ladder anyway. It was the same one he used to pick oranges from the tallest branches. 

“Use your  _arms_ ,” Silver said, rolling his eyes. “I know you have the muscle for it, I’ve been jerking off to those arms for as long as I’ve known you.”

Flint propped the ladder against the side of the pit, then paused. “What?” he asked. “Really?”

“I will happily stroke your ego or whatever else you’d like me to stroke as soon as you get out of there,” Silver said.

It took him awhile. Putting any weight on his right ankle threatened to send him toppling over in pain. He pulled himself up by his arms as best he could until Silver could lie down on his belly and reach his hand, and tug him out the rest of the way. They had to be slow, in case any of the soil around the opening was still loose, but also because Silver only had one foot to maintain leverage. There was a lot of grunting, a lot of pained whimpering. There was no dignity in the act, but eventually Flint was topside, half sprawled on top of Silver. The two of them lay panting into each other, which was not so unusual for them except for all the dirt and agony.

“Fuck,” said Flint after a moment. “I left my fucking boot down there.”

“We can have one of the schoolboys get it,” Silver said, muffled under Flint’s weight. Flint rolled off him gingerly, but Silver made no effort to move from the ground. “They’re going to have to help us clean up the oranges anyway, now that you’re unable.” Silver turned to face him, an evil smile on his face. “You’re out of  _commission_.”

“Stop,” said Flint.

“You’re going to have to  _rest_.”

“Ugh,” said Flint, sitting up. “I’m going back in the hole.” 

Silver laughed. “No, come on. Let me see your foot.” He sat up and softly poked Flint’s ankle, which had doubled in size. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Take off your shirt.”

Flint frowned. “Excuse me?” 

Silver was already removing his. “It’s not broken, only sprained. We need to keep it still.”

Flint watched silently as Silver folded his shirt precisely, hooking it under the arch in his foot and pulling it up towards his knees, then ripping his own shirt into three pieces and securing them tightly around. It still ached but it definitely felt more sturdy.

“Where did you learn how to do this?” Flint asked, watching Silver tighten the knots around his leg.

“A true sailor was born knowing how to tie a proper knot,” said Silver, focusing on his work and not looking at him.

Flint didn’t push it. They knew enough about each other’s past to know a great deal of it belonged there, even the good things. Flint felt curious about Silver in an idle way, satisfied in being surprised at the tiny discoveries that would crop up every now and then.

“I think you’re good,” Silver said, testing the makeshift bandages one more time before shooting Flint a grimace. “Come on. I only have the one crutch. You can be my left leg and I’ll be your right. With all this shit on the ground, we should make it back before the Second Coming.”

It didn’t take them that long, though they’d had to stop to rest and eat stray oranges often, so the sun was starting to set by the time they could see the house. Flint had spent most of the day in a hole, which probably should have given him a new respect for life, but mostly it just made him want a bath, a stiff drink, and the use of his fucking leg again. He supposed it did give him a new respect for Silver.

Once they got inside, Silver didn’t even pause to catch his breath. He pushed him into a chair and disappeared for a few moments, returning with a bucket from the well and cold water. 

And his knife.

“Hey!” said Flint as Silver began to cut away his pants. “These are perfectly good trousers!”

“I don’t want to disturb the wrapping,” Silver said easily, tugging off his other boot. He wrapped a cold rag around Flint’s ankle tightly, making him wince, but then the frigid water from the rain felt intensely good against his swollen skin. 

Silver took another clean cloth and used it to wipe the dirt and mud from Flint’s skin. He was very thorough. Flint was sitting in his kitchen naked, and it was probably just his imagination, probably just the fact that he’d barely eaten anything today and the throbbing pain he was experiencing, but being nude at the kitchen table made the room look different. Like seeing the whole place upside down.

Silver looked up at him from his knees, his eyes hooded and dark as he wiped dirt from Flint’s chest. He’d definitely had dreams like this, too. 

Silver placed a new cold cloth around his ankle and used the old one to gently remove the mud caked on his injured foot. He delicately rubbed at the sole, the heel, the space between each toe. He was methodical, focused, removing every inch of dirt from the skin until it was soft and pink, as clean as it had been on the day Flint was born. 

Silver moved onto the other foot, even though it wasn’t all that dirty. He smirked at Flint, who was starting to flush, to breathe a little heavier under his attention. He opened his mouth to say something when Flint interrupted. 

“If you’re about to compare yourself to Jesus Christ,” Flint said, “I’d like to point out my growing erection as cause for you to  _not_.”

Silver pouted, and rubbed at Flint’s foot a little harder, but it wasn’t the injured one so that was fine. Then Silver smirked again, that glint in his eye that made Flint’s heart speed up, because it meant he’d just gotten a terrifying or amazing idea in his head, and there was no way of knowing which one it was until it had already come to pass. 

“I was just going to say how  _princely_  you looked, sitting there,” said Silver, lifting his foot, “on your throne. Letting your loyal subject tend to your needs.” He brought his mouth to Flint’s clean skin, placing wet, soft kisses along the arch, up to his uninjured ankle. “ _Your highness_.”

Flint gripped Silver’s shoulder, his body jerking. “Christ,” he groaned. “ _Stop_.”

Silver let his foot drop with a grin and rose up on his knees, cupping the back of Flint’s neck. “You’re so easy,” he said against Flint’s lips. He kissed Flint hard then, biting until Flint opened up for him. He groaned into Flint, clutching at him everywhere. 

Flint knew all the ways Silver kissed. He kissed to tease Flint, or to distract him. Sometimes he kissed because he was too turned on and overwhelmed, or too angry, or because he felt in love and didn’t know how to say it. This kiss, though, was something else. 

Flint pulled back, and saw confirmation in Silver’s face. “You were worried about me.”

Silver scowled. “No, I wasn’t.”

“You were,” said Flint. “You were worried. You were  _afraid_.”

“Fuck off.”

“You were afraid I might be dead! You  _love me_.”

“I’m putting you back in the hole.”

Flint kissed him again, wrapping his arms around Silver’s back so he couldn’t escape. Silver made no effort to, however, just kissed him back as desperately as before, clinging to his face. 

This was foolish. This was bad timing. They had unfortunately befriended their neighbors, and they could easily stop by today to check on them after the storm. Any good samaritan could wander onto their property and find oranges on the ground and Flint naked in his kitchen, grinding his hips into Silver’s as Silver sucked on his tongue like it was his cock. Their discovery was always a possibility, and with him being unable to walk escape would be unlikely.

He pulled back to voice this concern, but Silver just scoffed. “Like I don’t have weapons hidden throughout the house. We’ll be fine.”

Flint was about to ask where the  _fuck_  – but then decided to let it go. “Didn’t you say something earlier about – stroking my ego?”

Silver’s fingers skittered down his chest. He looked Flint over for so long Flint felt himself starting to blush, which was probably the point. Then Silver took Flint’s injured leg and hoisted it over his shoulder, Flint’s ass sliding forward on the remnants of his trousers. 

“Best to keep this elevated,” Silver said. “It helps with the swelling.”

“We can move,” Flint said. “Your leg –” The rest of his concern died in his throat as Silver kissed Flint’s knee, trailing up his thigh before nuzzling the hair around his cock.

“These  _thighs_ ,” Silver breathed. “God knows what I’d do without these thighs in my life.”

Flint was about to say something to that but then Silver took the head of his cock into his mouth and all that came out was a long moan. His fisted Silver’s hair, his good foot jerking on the stone floor, unable to find purchase. 

Silver tongued at the slit, dipping under the hood before moving his mouth over him. He didn’t suck hard, but he kept his mouth tight, tongue gently undulated beneath his shaft which never failed to make Flint’s hips buck uncontrollably. Silver held him still with one arm over his waist, moving up and down on Flint’s cock, eyes never leaving Flint’s face. His other hand moved all over Flint, stroking his thigh, caressing his balls, rubbing the soft perineum. He’d never had a lover watch him so intently. Flint could just see Silver’s cock outlined in his trousers, could see the wet of pre-come, but Silver made no move to touch himself. He wondered if Silver could come just from watching Flint come. Someday they’d have to test that.

The hurricane had returned to St. Augustine, only hitting his kitchen. It whirled under his skin as he fucked up into Silver’s mouth, could hear the branches of his mind snap as Silver teased a single finger near Flint’s entrance. He groaned loudly, uncaring of his ankle as he tried to use it to pull Silver closer. He felt like an old sprawling cypress, bending to the heat and the wet and the raw, earthly strength of Silver’s mouth and Silver’s eyes. 

Except Silver wasn’t just the storm. Flint’s roots were Silver, too. If the wind tore him from the ground, Silver would blow away with him. 

He came with Silver’s name on his lips, like always. The only time Silver ever closed his eyes when sucking him was when he swallowed, savoring the taste. He took his time letting Flint drop from his mouth, slowly and with great care, the same way he’d treated Flint’s ankle. Like a precious thing.

Silver hadn’t come yet. But he seemed content to lean between Flint’s legs, eyes still shut, breathing him in. 

“I like how people look at me when I’m with you,” he said quietly, unmoving. “My whole life, people have only ever seen me standing beside someone and thought: friends. Or rivals, or partners. Strangers. No one has ever seen someone with me and thought  _family_. Until you. Until now.”

Then he added, “So the next hole you fall into better be your fucking grave, you asshole, and there better be room for two.” 

Flint let out a long breath, easing his hands from the tight hold of Silver’s hair. He didn’t feel any pain in his leg at all anymore. Silver had done a good job. He brushed a few stray strands from Silver’s face, then tilted it upwards. Silver opened his eyes after a moment. The sun was just a sliver on the horizon, the kitchen washed with dusky light, and they hadn’t lit any candles. But Silver could always see him, no matter how dark it was.

“Alright, alright,” said Flint, stroking his hair. “We’ll get a fucking horse.”

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two pirates and a baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my wife allie specifically asked for an orange fic for the tumblr dialogue prompt: “can i open my eyes yet?” so i'm not being too obnoxious
> 
> and i wrote this on inauguration day so i was depressed which is why it's extra sappy

Flint was headed out into the grove at dawn when Señor Fernandez rides up around the side of the house. Flint tensed. All he had on him was a basket and a piece of hard bread, nothing to cause any real damage.  It was the middle of summer, and he was already sweating through his shirt.

Silver had been up a moment ago, but once he ate a bit of breakfast with Flint, he went back to dozing in the bedroom. The humidity of August made him act as drowsy and irritating as a pregnant cat. 

“Hola, Santi,” said Fernandez.

Flint winced. Silver had started calling him that at the taberna and now everyone did it. As far as he could remember, Fernandez had never been to Flint’s orange grove. “What can I do for you, sir?”

Fernandez looked uncomfortable up on his horse. He shifted idly, swatting at a mosquito on his neck. He glanced around for a moment, and Flint realized he was searching for Silver.

“I promised Lua I would come by,” Fernandez started. “Last night, after you two left for home, a man came in. A stranger. English. He was looking for someone he couldn’t name. A man with one leg.”

Flint gripped his bread loaf tightly. He said, somewhat incorrectly, “Lots of men have only one leg.”

“You’re right,” Fernandez agreed quickly. But then he added, “The rest of his description, though. Sounded a lot like your cousin.”

“And what did anyone tell this stranger?” He tried hard to keep his voice sounding like Santiago Quijuana and not Captain Flint.

“Nothing,” said Fernandez. “But I doubt we were the only people he asked.”

Flint set down his basket, teeth clenched. “What did this man look like?”

“Rough,” he said. “Strange.” Which was about as much detail as Flint would get.

“My cousin was a seafarer,” said Flint. “You all know this. He dealt with all sorts of people. Even so despicable as an Englishman. I’ll speak to him about it when he wakes.” 

Fernandez nodded. “I promised Lua I would tell you,” he said again.

He was about to ride off when Flint called out to him. 

“The stranger,” Flint said. “Was he alone?”

A curious look passed over Fernandez’s face. “No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, he wasn’t. “He had two women with him.”

* * *

Flint dug up the buried treasure that morning instead of picking oranges. Just in case.

* * *

He finished hiding it in the cellar beneath the house. He went in through the back door to see if Silver was up, and he heard him talking in the front room. It wasn’t unusual. Silver often spoke to the cats, as well as to himself. It had started as a habit to annoy Flint, but now he did seemed to do it all the time, narrating each step in his recipes in the kitchen at work, chatting with objects he used and giving them names (his reserved teacup was named Madi, his knife Betsy). Flint wasn’t concerned about it – Silver just needed stories to tell. 

But then Flint heard a reply – a woman’s voice, out on the front porch. 

He made his way swiftly and silently through his home, but hung back in the shadows. Silver was standing outside, the front door open for the cats to roam in and out freely. Flint could see his knuckles white and livid on his crutch.

“When I said I owed you a favor,” Silver said, sounding incredulous, “this wasn’t what I fucking meant.”

“Well, you should have specified,” said a man’s voice. One Flint, after a moment, recognized. 

“ _Obviously_ ,” said Silver, “I’d thought you’d want something  _normal_ , like for me to kill someone. And I honestly thought  you were dead by now.” 

“You aren’t the only one who can stage a dramatic and wildly inaccurate demise,” said the man. 

And there was really no better opening. So Flint chose that moment to step onto the porch.

“No, he isn’t,” he said.

It felt good. Despite the fact that Flint stood there, wearing a sunhat, a loose shirt, and no shoes, Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny still let out audible gasps and drew their guns, while Max swore in French and retreated behind the other two.

“What the  _fuck_ –” Anne stared. 

“My thoughts exactly,” said Flint. “What the  _fuck_  are you doing on my property?”

Jack swallowed visibly, and needed a moment to collect himself before speaking. They were all looking back and forth between Flint and Silver, and Flint figured a hundred answers were probably presenting themselves, just by how close they stood. 

“We were looking for him,” Jack said. “He owes us a debt.”

Flint found he didn’t give a fuck what Silver might have needed to owe what was left of the Ranger crew. They had an understanding now – the only thing in their past they cared about anymore was who topped the night before so they could switch the following night. “How did you find us?”

“That one –” Anne said, pointing at Silver, “left behind a trail of bodies to follow.”

“If you knew what to look for,” Jack interjected. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Now, hang on,” Silver protested. But then all he said was, “How many constitutes a ‘trail?’”

“Ten,” said Max. 

Silver appeared to be counting. “…Who was the tenth?”

Flint rolled his eyes. “What the fuck do you want him for?”

Jack smiled. He took a step forward, but at Flint’s glare he didn’t step onto the porch. “We’re of a similar mind, Flint,” he said. “We are also looking for a way out of the life.”

“Well, you can’t stay here.”

“Obviously,” said Max, looking up at their small house and not completely hiding her distaste. “We have one more final prize in our grasp, to secure all of our futures forever.”

The dread Flint had felt all morning, since seeing Senor Fernandez ride up, increased tenfold. He felt ill, acid rolling around his stomach. His heart beat at an irregular and sickly rhythm as he spat out, “He’s not going with you.”

He felt Silver look at him, but he didn’t give a shit. Silver could be as mad at him as he fucking liked, as long as he was mad  _here_.

“Of course he’s not coming,” said Jack.

“That’s not the favor,” Silver added tiredly.

Someone cried out. At first, Flint thought it was one of the cats, until he saw Anne look down, cupping the front of her jacket, which he could tell now was bulging just so, and hush soothingly. An entirely un-Anne Bonny expression was on her face.

“What the fuck is this,” Flint said.

“That,” said Silver, “is the favor.”

As Flint continued to stare, Anne holstered her gun finally to shift aside a pale green blanket. Max crowded close to Anne’ side, stroking the fussy baby’s cheek softly, murmuring to both mother and child.

Jack drew himself up as he glared at Flint and Silver. He looked proud, and also embarrassed by his pride.

“The prize is guaranteed,” he said, “and safe to retrieve. But our plan requires all three of us to get it.”

“Your plan requires Max, too?” Silver asked.

“All plans require me, John Silver,” said Max. “Or have you forgotten so much?”

Silver looked pissed, snarling in a way Flint hadn’t seen since before he’d died. But Silver didn’t say anything in response, fist tightening on his crutch like he wanted to  _do_ something instead.

“We should only be gone three weeks,” said Jack. “A month at the outmost. Time is a factor, with this prize.”

They were being deliberately vague, Flint knew, still seeing them as formidable opponents, even though the only prizes Silver won these days were at his weekly poker nights, where he only cheated sometimes, and Flint still wasn’t wearing shoes. 

“A month,” he said.

Jack shifted awkwardly. “We obviously didn’t know we’d be asking  _you_ , too. I must admit, if it helps, that we are quite desperate in this endeavor. Since Annie’s birth, our desire for security has grown immeasurably.” 

“Annie?” 

“Anne the Second,” said Anne, then added, “I didn’t fuckin’ name her.”

Jack and Max said nothing, but both looked pleased with themselves. 

“And you came here, to ask Silver to watch over your infant daughter for a month.” Flint pointed. “ _Silver_?” 

“Like I said, we were desperate.” 

“And he’s smart enough to know what I’d do to him if she even so much as fucking burps wrong,” Anne threw in. 

Flint had thought it would take him a couple weeks to retrieve the Urca de Lima, once he’d gotten the page. A couple weeks, and then his life would be freedom and security away from the sea. Less than a year later, he’d been faking his death after waging a war against the entire British government. The moment one uttered the words “final prize”, they were tempting fate, and he knew fate had a way of finding the softest parts of one’s self, and digging its teeth in hard. He knew a few weeks was not always a few weeks. 

But he knew, too, that second chances were possible. Third and fourth ones, too. He knew the life they were aiming for wasn’t completely unlikely, either. 

“Does she eat oranges?” Flint asked.

Silver turned wordlessly and stomped back into the house. 

Max smiled. “She likes bananas. But I’m sure she’ll like oranges just fine.”

* * *

Silver didn’t stick around to see the three say goodbye to Annie. Flint, honestly, wished he could have left as well. He could have happily gone his whole life without seeing Anne Bonny with tears in her eyes. They said their endeavor was safe, but that was almost a meaningless concept in this life.

He brought the baby inside the house, setting down the small pack Max gave him, filled with some extra clothes and one or two toys. He looked down at Annie.

She peered up at him, large brown eyes blinking in the sudden shade of the house. She hadn’t yet realized her mother had gone, but Flint figured she would soon.

Silver had disappeared. Sometimes they both needed moments to themselves, and would find areas in the property to hide and deal with their intrusive thoughts. Flint let him be. He knew Silver had a problem with what just happened, and figured he would eventually get over it, or fill Flint in on what was bothering him.

Perhaps he just didn’t like children. But Flint had seen him with the boys at the schoolhouse, and he was great with them. Maybe it was babies, then. Flint knew nothing about Silver’s life before Silver had stolen the page to the Urca gold. Had he younger siblings he’d cared for in his youth?

Had he a child of his own, at one point?

The thought made the coil of dread spring back up through his spine, but it had a different edge to it. Fear of a thing that might have happened long ago. Silver had been a young man, then, but not young enough it wasn’t a possibility. 

Perhaps he should have told Jack no. He didn’t, honestly, know what made him say yes. Maybe the idea that they weren’t trying to take Silver away had filled him with such relief.

“Are you going to be a problem here?” Flint asked Annie. 

Annie blinked at him and gurgled. But that was not unlike how some of his old crew used to respond to him, and he decided he understood the meaning.

He took her out into the grove. Using an empty barrel and some of her blankets, he propped her up under a tree outside the house. He gave her an orange to play with, and watching her clutch it with chubby fingers and shake it like a rattle made Flint feel – something. 

He picked just enough oranges to give to the schoolboys and the guards at the fort, soothed by Annie’s quiet babbling to her makeshift toy. One of the cats came up to her barrel, and Flint nearly leapt off his ladder to shoo it away, but the cat just sniffed her once. Annie tapped its nose, and the cat curled up next to her and fell asleep.

He made his way back to the house shortly after, Annie in one arm, oranges under the other, and found Silver waiting for him to go to work. 

“What the fuck were you thinking, exactly?” Silver asked. He still looked pale and mad. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and nothing I can think of makes any sense.”

Flint only shrugged. He looked down at her again. She had started dozing in his arms.

“I’ve never held a baby before.” Flint realized it was true as soon as he said it. He’d been an only child, and his grandfather’s friends had been too old to have young children for him to play with. And there weren’t any infants running around the Navy yards, or in the brothels and taverns in towns like Tortuga or Port Royale. He couldn’t remember ever even being this close to someone so young and small.

Silver stared at him, a range of emotion passing through his face, before he sighed heavily. He walked up to Flint and Annie, put one hand on Flint’s neck, the other on Anne’s face.

“You have to support her head more,” he said. “Like this.”

* * *

“Can I open my eyes yet?” Lua asked.

“Not yet,” said Silver, sneaking past her with the baby.

“I’m not an idiot,” said Lua, opening her eyes. “I’m not the one that knocked up a scary-looking Englishwoman and then let her leave me with the baby.” She glared at the three of them. “No babies in the kitchen, you know this.”

“I’m not –” Silver stopped, then sighed again. Annie reached up with one fist and tugged hard on his beard, but he didn’t even flinch at it. “I’m not going to raise her. I’m watching her while her mother gets herself settled. No more than a month.”

“You should be marrying her,” said Lua.

Silver let out a strangled laugh. “Oh. No, no thank you,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t even agree to watching her. That was him.” 

“Fine. Then you’re the idiot,” she said, pointing to Flint. “And you’re just a bastard.”

Then she said, “Stop walking. No babies in my kitchen! It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re going to fire me?” 

“Give me the baby,” she said, taking her quickly but gently from Silver. “You, go cook some food. You, deliver your goods as fast as you can to get back here to look after this mistake you’ve made.”

Flint felt anxious, looking at Annie in Lua’s arms. He knew Anne and Jack would probably feel about as happy at a stranger holding her as Captain Flint, which is to say, not at all. The idea of letting her out of his sight unsettled him. 

Lua must have seen it on his face because her face relaxed somewhat. “She’ll be fine with me. I’ve raised babies before. Just hurry back, I have a business to run.” 

With one last long look at Silver, and an even longer look at Annie, Flint started to leave.

“Alright, Baby,” Silver said behind him. “You be good for Señora Lua.” 

“She has no name yet?”

“Oh. It’s Annie. I think.”

He heard Lua scoff. “That’s an English name. Get to work. Come, Ana. I’ll show you how we stock the bar here.”

* * *

Flint sat at his usual table near the kitchen, trying to get Annie to eat some banana. She seemed mostly interested in smearing them on her face while using the spoon as a hammer. She looked happy though. 

“And that’s when I happened to glance over and saw your Uncle John trying to protect himself with a meat cleaver,” he was saying quietly so no one would hear. “But your Uncle John was an idiot then and didn’t know how to fight, and he would have likely died had Uncle James not come over to save him.” 

Annie rubbed some banana between her fingers and looked at Flint. She held up her messy hands to show him.

“That’s very good,” he told her. “Anyway, Uncle John probably should have died, since he nearly killed the fucking crew with an uncooked pig, and glazed it with so much honey, bees had swarmed the whole damn camp. But fortunately your Uncle James knew how to properly cook a pig, because Uncle James was an adult and not a useless fucking thief like your Uncle John was, and that is how I first taught Uncle John how to cook.”

“Oh my god,” said Silver from behind. “Can you please stop? I can’t deal with this.”

Flint looked over his shoulder. “What?” 

Silver came up close so no one could hear. He looked pained, hand flat on his stomach. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at or why I like looking at it. But if you don’t stop doing whatever it is you’re doing, there will be little stopping me from throwing you across this table and trying my fucking hardest to put a baby in you.”

Flint flushed, then glared hard at him. “Shut the fuck up.” 

“I’m just saying,” said Silver, brushing Annie’s auburn hair back, causing her to look up at him and gesture with her spoon. “I won’t be held responsible for my actions, and it will be hard to run away from the angry Catholic mob with one leg and a baby.”

It didn’t surprise Flint that Silver chose to get over his problem rather than be up front about it. Still, he asked, “Are you finished being an asshole about this, then?”

“The day I finish being an asshole,” said Silver, “is the day you should check for a pulse. Lua said we can go, by the way.”

Night had only just fallen. People were only just starting to eat dinner. “What? Why?”

Silver made a face. “She said young babies need rest. As do new fathers.” 

Flint wondered if that included him, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted it to. He watched Silver take a napkin and wipe down Annie’s face and hands gently, saying, “Baby, I see you’ve inherited your manners from your father, but thankfully it seems you’ve got your mother’s mouth instead.” It was true, she  _was_  remarkably silent, for a baby. “A part of me hopes you’ll get Max’s intelligence, but the other part of me then fears for the future if that’s the case.”

“Have you ever done this before?” Flint had to ask. “Acted as a father?”

Silver said nothing, busying himself with cleaning up Annie’s mess from the table. Then he looked at Flint and smiled. “Don’t you remember when I acted as your Quartermaster? I was father to dozens of smelly, thieving, rotten children.”

Flint decided to let it go. Silver wasn’t exactly wrong, either.

* * *

Flint brought up an empty crate from the cellar, and used piles of straw and blankets to make a crib for Annie. He found in her pack a knitted doll, already worn and stained, the painted features all but gone, and he added it to her new crib. 

When he gets back into the bedroom, Silver was lying on the bed shirtless, his hair loose on the pillow. The baby was asleep on his chest, rising and falling with Silver’s even breathing. Flint leaned in the doorway, needing time to take in the sight. Perhaps this was what Silver meant at the tavern, the fondness and protectiveness and, the most inexplicable, the  _lust_  he felt cascading through him. He knew Silver was aware of him standing there, and even though Annie slept, Silver still read aloud from the book he held over his face. 

“All beasts are happy, for, when they die, their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements,” Silver said quietly, yet still inflecting with a performance. “But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell. Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer, that hath depriv’d thee of the joys of heaven.”

“Really?” Flint asked, setting the crate down. “Is that the best my bookshelves have to offer a child?”

“She’ll need to learn sometime,” Silver said, lowering the book. He sat up, hand under Annie to keep her still. “Not my fault the devils in this life are unavoidable.”

Flint hummed. “There  _are_  two in this room right now, after all.”

Silver smiled. 

Then he said, as Flint leaned down to take the baby from him, “Put her out in the hall.”

Flint gave him a look. 

“Leave the door open, then, so we can hear her,” Silver said, rolling his eyes. “You won’t even let me touch you when the cats are in the room.”

Flint kissed him softly, one hand cupping the back of Annie’s head to support her just how Silver showed him. “That’s because the cats aren’t supposed to be in the fucking house.”

“Well, I put them all outside for the night, because of the baby,” Silver said. “I’m afraid we’ll be facing a mutiny from them tomorrow.”

“Is it wrong that the thought of a mutiny makes me almost nostalgic?” Flint asked, placing Annie in her crib, now just outside the room. She snuffled as he set her down on her stomach, tiny fists curling in her sleep in a way that resembled her mother. 

“Yes,” said Silver. “Incredibly wrong.”

Flint crawled into the bed, wrapping himself around Silver. Silver’s chest was still warm from where Annie had been sleeping. Sometimes it didn’t feel enough, to just kiss Silver, so Flint bit Silver’s bottom lip and sucked it into his mouth, wanting to consume all of him. 

Silver tugged Flint’s shirt off, then shook Flint’s hair loose from its tie. He pulled at Flint until he was stretched all the way over him, full weight pressing down. They were sticky without even exerting themselves, the thick humidity of the summer not relenting even after the sun fell away. Silver often complained about the heat, except when they were lying together. Then, it was like Flint was the only thing protecting him from a cold and unforgiving world. 

“Why did you agree to do this?” Silver murmured against him. “Why would you take her in?”

Flint looked out in the hallway, where Annie slept on, cooing softly in a dream. “I didn’t think I’d ever have another opportunity,” he said. “It’s not like I’ll ever have one of my own. I just – wondered what it would feel like.”

He hadn’t pictured a family in years. As a youth, before he’d truly known himself, he thought he’d have a wife and kids the way men were supposed to, and the idea had filled him with a horrible nausea, which he’d attributed to losing his freedom as a single man. With the Hamiltons, later, they would all discuss welcoming children into their home, Flint helping raise them as another parent, like Max was to Annie and Jack. On Nassau, afterwards, soon after they’d arrived, Miranda had brought up the idea of them having a child together, and Flint should have obliged her, knowing keenly of her loneliness and isolation as he sailed without her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, unwilling at the time to pass on a name that was false and a bloodline that was evil and violent. He hadn’t wanted to have anything so human as a family. 

He and Silver were a family now. He knew that. He loved that. But still, he’d wanted to know what it felt like, just for a little while, to be slightly bigger than what they were. 

“This was a terrible idea,” said Silver. 

Flint blinked at him. “Why’s that?”

“Because I can see the look on your face,” said Silver solemnly. “We’re eventually, hopefully, going to have to give that baby back to her parents, and you’re going to devastated. And then I’m going to have to steal you a baby to cheer you up again.”

“You won’t have to steal me a baby,” Flint said, frowning. 

“Nah,” said Silver. “I’ll do it. But this time we’re letting Lua think it’s your illegitimate child.” 

Flint kissed him again, pushing him back against the pillows. He didn’t want Silver to steal him a baby, but if he did it, Flint didn’t know how hard he’d protest. 

“Why did  _you_  agree to this?” Flint asked, a moment later. “You know, eventually.”

Silver’s hands moved low down his back, stroking at the base of his spine. “I have this bad habit of indulging your most insane whims,” he murmured, running his nails lightly over Flint’s skin. “I really need to grow out of that some day.”

Flint pressed one more kiss into Silver’s mouth before inching lower, leaving a wet trail over Silver’s throat and down his chest. He lifted off to say, unlacing Silver’s breeches, “Allow me to indulge you, then, for awhile.”

* * *

 

Flint awoke to an empty bed. He stretched, pulling the thin sheet off his lower body. The morning heat was already cruel and overwhelming. The only nice thing about the summer was it required more baths, and more opportunities to bathe Silver.

The crib in the hallway, when he walked by, was also empty. 

He found Silver sitting at the table, like always. Silver’s hair was knotted high on his head, and Flint watched the beads of sweat drip down his bare back, suddenly desperately thirsty. 

Silver had Annie balanced on his lap. In one hand he held Betsy the knife. In the other, he held an orange. 

“Here, Baby,” Silver was saying, slicing up the orange  “I know  _you’ll_  appreciate this trick the schoolboys taught me.” He stuck the piece, rind and all, in his mouth. 

Flint was too warm. He itched from too many mosquito bites, and his back ached from age and lugging oranges every day. His chest hair had more than a few grays in it, and in another year or so he knew he would likely need glasses to continue reading at night. He could smell his own sweat and he needed to shave and he felt simultaneously overcome with love and fear, looking at Silver with the baby. He felt human. 

Over at the table, Annie looked up at Silver’s grinning orange mouth, and laughed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally posted [here](https://vowel-in-thug.tumblr.com/post/157047326421/orangeverse-is-life-and-i-dont-know-where-wed%22) for an anonymous prompt

Silver stretched out across the bed and only touched cooled sheets. He blinked in the darkness, disoriented, both surprised to learn he was alone and feeling an odd kind of familiarity that took him a moment to understand. Once again, he was in a position to know what it felt like to be Flint.

Some mornings Silver would hover in the doorway where Flint couldn’t see him right away. He’d watch Flint roll over to Silver’s side of the bed, half-asleep, the pillow imprints creasing his warm, soft skin. He’d watch Flint breathe deeply, easily, lingering in a scent for a little longer, looking utterly content.

Silver didn’t feel anything close to contentment, waking up alone. His heart lurched as he sat up, looking around as his eyes adjusted to the night. Of course, Flint wasn’t anywhere in the tiny room. Of course Silver was completely by himself.

He told himself to just fucking  _relax_ , for  _once_. Flint got up to take a piss. He got up for some water. He wasn’t  _gone_.  He’d left the room but he wouldn’t – go.

But it was a mantra he had to tell himself daily: they were here, together. When Flint left to work out in the grove, or to make his deliveries, or just stepped out of the room for a moment, Silver had to remind himself that Flint would always be back.

It wasn’t that he was insecure with his standing with Flint, or that he was some sort of lovesick obsessive or something. He just never felt completely real unless Flint was looking at him, or touching him. Without that, he felt false and fleeting – like a charlatan on good days and like mist on bad days, ready to disperse as soon as the day broke. 

Flint would be right back, Silver told himself as he pulled his pants back on. He probably just left the room a second before Silver awoke, he reasoned as he grabbed his crutch from the wall and walked out into the main part of the house. There was no reason to hunt him down, he thought as he did just that. 

The clock near the kitchen said it had just gone three in the morning. Silver was often up at this time. He used to pace the house up and down, mind blank and concentrating only on keeping himself silent as he moved, until the sun finally rose and he could get the tea started, and let a cat or three inside for company. But recently, he’d found himself in those early hours awake but still in bed, watching Flint’s dark shape until light streaked in through the window and gave him back form. He found himself fascinated by the way Flint became himself out of the dark every morning. And then he’d rise to get breakfast going, leaving Flint to those few minutes of early solitude. 

He finally found Flint outside at the edge of his grove. The moon was almost full and the sky cloudless, so it seemed every tree stood out in sharp relief. Silver hated looking at stars now. He could only see navigations in their swirling chaos and nothing else, and looking at them too hard made his stomach turn like seasickness. 

So he looked at Flint’s back instead, his long white shirt and his long white legs. His hair curling and disheveled around his ears. His hands lax by his side, fingers open and empty. The sight of Flint’s large hands in repose never failed to soothe Silver.

He didn’t ever sleep long enough to dream anymore, but it didn’t bother Silver. He’d only have nightmares if he ever did manage to sleep deep enough, and he had no need to bother with good dreams these days. Being able to see James Flint standing beneath an orange tree like this whenever he wanted was better than anything his broken mind could conjure. Dreaming seemed like a waste of time, now.

He approached Flint, not bothering to keep quiet, so Flint didn’t startle when Silver came up behind him and wrapped his free arm around his waist. Flint fell back against Silver with a small sigh, his head dropping down on Silver’s shoulder and a hand coming up to keep his arm in place.

“Bad dream again,” Flint said quietly. “For once I didn’t wake you, and I wanted to leave you to rest.”

Silver pressed a kiss to the side of Flint’s neck and said, “If el Castillo de San Marco is burning down again, you can let me rest. If you catch someone out here stealing your crop, you can let me rest. If you need me, you wake me up.”

Flint lifted his other hand to cup the back of Silver’s head. “If the fort was on fire, I wouldn’t have to wake you,” he said, “because you’d likely be the one responsible.”

Silver hummed in agreement, pressing his nose into the skin behind Flint’s ear. “And if you caught a thief out here, you wouldn’t need  _my_  help in doling out appropriate punishment.”

“I don’t like thieves,” Flint said.

Silver tightened his arm around him. “Liar,” he said.

He didn’t ask if Flint wanted to talk about his nightmare, because there was no answer Silver would want to hear or that Flint would want to give. They couldn’t protect each other from the horrors of their own heads, and the helplessness was as bad as their individual suffering. 

So Silver just pulled away and stepped beside him, taking one of Flint’s hands in his. “Fancy a walk?”

It wasn’t easy, walking with a crutch and holding someone’s hand, and Silver honestly hadn’t much practice with it. But they were in no hurry, moving at random down the aisles of the grove, and their pace was slow. They were both half-dressed and shoeless, each step measured as they listened to the cicadas chirping loudly and the cats hunting a late night dinner. A light wind rustled the leaves together, the moonlight trickling through them like water through stone. Beneath the canopy, Silver couldn’t see the stars anymore.

“Bored yet?’ Flint asked finally. His calluses rubbed against Silver’s, his grip loose and dry. 

“Bored? No. Lost? Most likely. I hope you’re paying attention to where we’re going.”

“No,” said Flint. He stopped walking, but he didn’t take his hand back. “I mean, here. This life. The routine of it, the simplicity. Me. You’re still relatively young, surely you –” 

Silver cut him off by kissing his knuckles, holding his lips there until Flint finally looked at him. Then he let go, and walked himself backwards, also a difficult feat, until his back hit the rough bark of an orange tree. “We’re both of us old, Captain,” he said, holding his hand out. “But I only feel young when I’m with you.”

Flint wordlessly approached until he was right in front of Silver, and then moved even closer, pushing Silver further into the tree with a searing kiss.

Silver clutched at the back of Flint’s head, tilting him to deepen the kiss. He thrusted his bare chest against Flint’s, loving the way the soft cotton of Flint’s shirt felt against his hard nipples, but he knew he’d prefer the feel of Flint’s skin on his even more.

Silver pulled away from Flint’s mouth, leaning his head back onto a low branch, knowing Flint would immediately latch onto his neck. He groaned as Flint nipped at his adam’s apple, his stubble tickling at the hollow beneath his throat, and slid his leg between Flint’s.

“Have you ever thought,” Silver got out, clinging to Flint, “about fucking me out here in the orange grove?”

“No,” Flint lied, not lifting his head.

“Because you could right now,” Silver said, rubbing his thigh along Flint’s bare, hard cock. “If that was the kind of thing you’ve thought about before.”

Flint froze, teeth pressed into Silver. “You’re such an asshole,” he said finally, before stepping back and tearing his night shirt off. “You have –”

“Yes,” said Silver, reaching into his pocket to pull out a jar of oil. There was always a good chance he had  _something_  on him to use for fucking.

“You goddamn deviant,” Flint said, snatching it out of his hand and sucking on Silver’s lips.

They moved like clockwork, like a well-run crew on a steady, familiar ship. Flint opened the jar and coated his fingers as Silver stepped out of his trousers. Silver dropped his crutch and wrapped his left leg around Flint’s waist, and Flint’s hand was there to hold it up. Flint breached him with one finger, and Silver sucked on his bottom lip to swallow his moan. Silver widened his stance as well as he could manage, breath hitching as he worked himself back on one finger as Flint teased a second one at his entrance. It was a song they’d both played a million times but still got shivers at the high notes. It was waking up on a ship and knowing there was nothing out a porthole but the wide, endless expanse of blue on top of blue, but looking out anyway, and it still causing nothing but anticipation, and terror, and excitement, at the overwhelming possibility of it all. Silver never had anyone as long as he had Flint, and every day he felt awed by the wildness of familiarity. 

“Fuck,  _Flint_ ,” Silver gasped, rocking onto Flint’s hand. “ _Please_ , Captain – now,  _now_.”

Flint withdrew his fingers and SIlver hitched his other leg around his waist, leaning against the hard wood of the tree. Flint lined his cock up blindly, for he was watching Silver’s face as he slowly, slowly breached him. 

Silver clutched at Flint’s shoulders, his back arching as he leveraged himself down. The stretch was perfect, the slide glorious. He took great, gasping breaths as he adjusted to the sudden girth, the sweet citrus tang in the air making him lightheaded.

Finally, Flint was all the way inside, hands under Silver’s ass to keep him up. It was dark beneath the canopy of the trees, but the light in Flint’s eyes was always enough to illuminate him. He looked at Silver, mouth agape, dazed, that same disbelief he wore whenever he got to fuck Silver.

That look always threatened to make Silver say something stupid, something embarrassing and risky, so he kissed Flint hard and ground down on his cock instead. Silver hated feeling like his words weren’t enough, but they never seemed to be when he wanted to be real with Flint. But he’d learned over years the permanence of actions. And he could only hope Flint understood that every kiss was another day Silver swore to be at his side. By this point, they’d be together through to the next millennium. 

Flint groaned into his mouth and thrust once, making Silver jump along the tree bark, making Silver gasp.

“The wood, on your back…” He still looked dazed, but in a fucked out way. “We can – move –”

“No,” Silver interrupted, twitching his hips, causing Flint to thrust on instinct. “Like this. I want this.”

And Flint could never stop himself from doing what Silver wanted, and he began to move, each thrust shallow but heavy and overwhelming. “So, really,” he said, resting his forehead against Silver’s and looking down at where his cock was working itself inside him. “Fucking out here – was _your_ fucking fantasy.”

“Fantasies are just dreams, Captain.  _Oh_!” Silver tangled his hands in Flint’s hair, trying to hang on. “I don’t –  _shit_  – I don’t need to dream anymore.”

Flint’s hips moved faster, erratic, and Silver bucked wildly up and down with him, uncaring of the scratches forming on his back. He licked his own palm shakily and reached down, stroking his cock, running his thumb over the wet head to slick his hand up more. 

“Fuck,” Flint gasped, losing his rhythm as he watched Silver jerk off. “ _Silver_ , just look at you,  _fuck_.”

Silver looked, at their bodies working together. Even when he’d had two legs, his body never worked half as good as when it moved with Flint’s. 

He pulled on himself in uneven strokes, feeling Flint’s fingers dig into his ass with a desperation to touch Silver’s cock. Silver squeezed down hard on Flint’s cock, keeping himself tight around him as Flint’s hips pistoned forward in a frenzy.

Then, Flint stepped back an inch, pulling Silver with him so he was now slumped back slightly against the tree. He grabbed an overhead branch for balance as Flint deepened each push, the new angle hitting the spot inside so perfectly Silver saw stars, but not the kind he hated. The kind that led him right back to Flint every time.

“ _Christ_ , Silv –” Flint stretched his asscheeks wider, rolling his hips like tidal waves, each one crashing down. “You feel so  _fucking_  good, Silver, you’re so  _good_  for me,  _fuck_.”

Silver moaned, stroking himself fast, feeling restless and close to undone. “Oh motherfuck, oh  _Christ_ , Flint,  _harder_ , please–”

Flint leaned over him to kiss him again, swallowing all of his pleas. He risked his grip on Silver’s ass to move a hand up his back, just cupping his spine gently, keeping his flushed, dirty skin away from the unforgiving bark. For some reason, that’s what did it for Silver, his climax catching him by such surprised he bit down on Flint’s lip, hard enough to draw blood. But Flint just groaned loudly, tilting his head to kiss him wider as thick ropes of come coated both their stomach and Silver’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” Silver pulled back to gasp, before kissing him soft, quick. He was still shaking from his own aftershocks, from Flint fucking him rough and sweet. “I’m  _sorry_ , fuck,  _oh – Ja – God,_  I – “

Flint kissed him again, completely careless of his wounded mouth and adding another year to their millennia. His hips stuttered, jerking as he finally came deep inside Silver, his long whine caught between Silver’s tongue and teeth. Silver had so many different sensations battling for his attention – the hot come dripping out his ass, the sweat and likely some blood trickling down his scratched back, Flint’s pants warm and soft over his cheek – but more than anything, he felt strongest Flint’s heart racing, the beat of it in time with Silver’s own pounding away where they were pressed chest to chest. 

Silver pulled away to try and breath, and ran his finger across Flint’s lips. “I’m sor–”

“Shut up,” Flint said, kissing him again quickly, and even though they hadn’t eaten any, Silver tasted oranges in his blood. “You know I love being able to feel you the next day.”

Silver had seen him a few times throughout a day, secretly pressing down in places with his fingertips, at hidden bite marks on his ribs or inside his thighs. He’d seen Flint sit down purposely harder than he needed to, in the hours after Silver had fucked him. He guessed Flint also needed reminders that Silver was still there.

Flint’s lip had stopped bleeding by the time he got Silver standing again. He held onto the tree as Flint helped him step into his trousers and got him his crutch.

“We’ve christened this tree,” Silver said, patting the bark as Flint was pulling on his nightshirt. “This tree will produce your best oranges next harvest, you watch.”

“I have to remember not to give any of the schoolboys fruit from this tree,” Flint said, grimacing. “How’s your back?”

“Fantastic,” Silver said, facing Flint so he couldn’t look at it. “Though perhaps I spoke too soon about you keeping me young.”

Flint snorted, and held out his hand. Silver took it without hesitation. Flint’s hair was messy, his lips absurdly red, and his shirt lopsided, exposing all of his neck and part of one shoulder. This was what he meant before, about feeling young, because Silver was exhausted and his whole body ached, but he felt ready and open for Flint all the time, a yearning that never seemed to fade, or to feel satisfied. 

Flint brought Silver’s hand up to his mouth and kissed his knuckles. “Fuck being young,” he said, the words drifting over Silver’s skin like leaving a dream. “I only ever made mistakes when I was young.”

Silver tugged him gently back down the aisle of trees towards home. “And now?”

Flint’s thumb rubbed the back of Silver’s hand. “Now I’m down to only one mistake a day. Two, at the most. What would you call that?”

Silver yearned, and unbidden, he remembered the first time he felt such a sensation, swirling up in an empty pit deep inside. He smiled, and said, “Progress.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for an anonymous prompt, and the suggestion of many that i needed to fulfill my promise to get them a horse in case flint ever fell in a hole again

Flint returned from the grove in the middle of the morning to find a mule in his yard, eating grass. He stared at it, one foot frozen mid-air, barrel of oranges propped against his hip.

The mule stared back blankly with one eye, long ears twitching at the buzz of mosquitos. It was spotted buckskin, maybe fourteen hands as far as Flint could tell, and it offered no explanation for its presence on Flint’s property.

“Um,” said Flint. “Hi.”

The mule blinked at him slowly, before ripping out another chunk of Flint’s grass.

Flint set down his basket. It was heavy, plus he had no other moves to make. The mule didn’t seem to notice.

Just then, Silver strolled out the back of the house. He looked unusually sweaty for this early in the day, his hair pulled back in a knot high on his head. It was kind of a feminine hairstyle, but Silver was both too vain to cut it and too stubborn to care what people thought about how he styled it. Flint liked how it looked, but it usually meant Silver had been doing something strenuous, and since he hadn’t spent the morning _fucking_ Flint, it probably wasn’t a good sign.

“Oh good,” Silver said, seeing him. “You’ve met.”

“ _Silver._ ”

Silver approached the mule and pat it heartily on the rump, a cloud of dust rising from the impact. He coughed, then grinned. “Happy anniversary,” he said.

Flint felt a twitch developing. There was little he trusted, even in his life here, but he knew he could rely on his own face, to properly convey what he was feeling when words wouldn’t come. He said nothing, and let his eyebrows do the talking.

Silver frowned, shifting awkwardly on his crutch. “You said we could get a horse!” He walked over to Flint, saying, “I saved my own money and purchased it from Señor Fernandez. It was something of a strange transaction. I tried not to make it too obvious that it was the first time I’d ever bought something using money I actually earned myself. That’s something else we should celebrate, I think.” He smiled at Flint. It was a smile waiting for applause.

Flint said, “That’s a mule.”

“I -- what?”

“That’s not a horse,” Flint said. “That’s a mule.”

Silver turned to look at it. “What’s the difference?”

“The ears, to start.”

As though aware it was being scrutinized, the mule lifted its head from the grass, chewing widely, one ear flicking absently. At the moment, it looked more cow-like than anything.

“You still said we could get one,” Silver pointed out. “Since it’s an anniversary, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I was also planning on having you suck my cock tonight, too.”

Flint closed his eyes. Perhaps, he thought, if he kept them closed long enough, he would fall back asleep and not have to deal with this. Or maybe he’d just die. “For our anniversary, you bought _yourself_ a mule, and _you_ get your cock sucked.”

“For our anniversary, I saved you the trouble of buying me a horse,” Silver said, and suddenly he was extremely close, close enough that his lips were brushing against his skin. He pressed a slow, wet kiss into Flint’s cheekbone, just below his eye, and said, “And I know you love nothing more than tasting me, hot and heavy on your tongue. I don’t even need to _see_ the fucked out bliss on your face to know you love it, Captain, I just have to listen to all the fucking _sounds_ you make.”

 _Christ_. Flint shivered, though the sun suddenly felt blistering on the back of his neck. He didn’t know if he wanted to slap Silver or kiss him, even turned his face slightly to maybe do so, but neither seemed appropriate in front of the mule. He couldn’t voice it, but Silver’s gift _was,_ in fact, just what he wanted. Instead he said, “What anniversary?”

Silver pulled away slightly. Flint opened his eyes to catch the full effect of his pout. “You don’t remember?”

The first time they met had been the end of May, which had just passed. They started fucking in February. What happened in June worthy of purchasing a mule? Flint shrugged.

Silver sighed, stepping away. “You’ll figure it out. C’mon, let’s make the rounds. I can’t wait to introduce him to Lua. I have a feeling she’ll be _marginally_ impressed with me.”

“If you’re going to ride everywhere now instead of walk, you’re going to get fat,” Flint said, following him. “Especially with all the picking at the food you pretend you don’t do in the kitchens.”

“You’ll still want me even if I get fat,” Silver said confidently.

“You think so?”

Silver stuck his foot in the stirrup and, using only the crutch to steady himself, easily swung his left leg over the mule’s back. He stuck the crutch through a strap on the saddle, took up the reigns, and looked at Flint with a small smile, like he knew Flint was close to swallowing his tongue as he watched Silver move. “You want me now, even though I’m greying and scarred and crippled. I think you’d still want me if I gained three hundred pounds, shaved my head, or took to wearing frocks.”

Flint approached, looking up at Silver. He cupped his knee and said, “The other two, maybe, but if you cut your hair, we’re through.”

Silver leaned down, still smiling, but not close enough to kiss. “Even the frocks?”

Flint ran his hand up the inside of Silver’s leg until he found his crotch, warm and familiar beneath his palm, watching the rainbow of expressions emerge on Silver’s face. “You’d look good in silks,” he said lowly, caressing slightly, feeling Silver’s shudder under his fingertips.

One thing he loved about Silver was how eager he was to be touched at all times. He’d forget everything and anything under Flint’s hand, and the flustered, red look on his face when he came back to reality was always a sight to see. The look rose now, when the mule shifted under him and Silver suddenly sat up from where he’d been swaying towards Flint’s lips. With his hair pulled back all the way, Flint could see the flush creeping down his neck.

Flint raised an eyebrow, withdrawing his hand. “Do you remember my rule now?”

Silver sighed. “No sexual teasing before work. You really know how to suck the fun out of life, you know that?”

“I do,” said Flint, because he did.

“Go get your cart, then,” Silver said, jerking the mule towards the front of the house.

Before he listened, Flint asked, “Does it have a name?”

Silver shrugged.

Flint sighed. He gave the mule another look over before petting its neck. It huffed fondly in response. “Welcome to _Naranjal de Miranda,_ Solomon Little,” he said. “Home to most pathetic bastards this side of St. Augustine. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”

* * *

The mule didn’t actually speed them up any, since Flint still had to push the cart, and Silver wasn’t about to leave him behind. Flint suspected one of the reasons Fernandez was so willing to part with him was due to his age. It plod heavily along the dirt road, each step measured and specific, undistracted by any of their surroundings. Solomon was old, but he still knew how to do a job right. Flint decided he didn’t mind the mule so much after all.

Also, as they went on, Silver was able to keep one hand on Flint’s shoulder, brushing the nape of his neck with every other step. Flint didn’t mind that either.

“So, it’s not the first time we met?” Flint asked.

“No,” Silver said. “That would have been a few weeks ago, though. Not exactly a moment worth celebrating. What with the fear, and all.” 

“It’s not something I wouldn’t know about, is it? Like the first time you pictured me naked?”

Silver’s fingers edge up Flint’s head, tugging slightly on the locks. “Nah. That would have been _before_ we actually met.”

“Really?”

“Sometime between your heartfelt, passionate speech to your crew and bashing Singleton’s head in. The line is still somewhat blurry to me.”

Solomon whinnied a little, like he was laughing. Silver pet his flank absently, clicking his tongue with a small smile. It was nice, walking beside Silver this way, but perhaps he could spare some coin and get a horse for himself too. Or perhaps he could just purchase a harness for Solomon to attach his cart, so he could share the saddle with Silver. That would be nice, too. Although that might look a bit obvious to an outsider. He can barely contain himself now, grip strained on the handles of his cart as Silver’s blunt fingernails scratching at his scalp. He couldn’t imagine pressing that close to Silver, smelling him, feeling his muscles shift against his chest, and having it look even slightly platonic.  

“Oh,” said Flint, feeling like a needy dog as he leaned into Silver’s hand. “Was it the time with the sharks?”

“When?”

“When we hunted the sharks, while we were becalmed,” said Flint. “What, did we have _more_ than one shark moment?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Silver said, his fingers moving in concentric circles now. “No. That was… in the winter, I think. Late in the year, at least. It would be so much easier to tell if there were any fucking seasons in the Caribbean.”

Flint didn’t respond, trying to think. It was proving more and more difficult, the longer Silver played with his hair.

“We should do that again,” Silver said suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“Fishing.”

Flint looked up at him. Silver’s fingers hadn’t moved, so now they teased right behind his ear. “For sharks?”

“Regular fishing,” Silver clarified. “I think if it’s not your occupation, it’s supposed to be fun. Relaxing. Have you ever fished? Not casting a net at sea, or hunting sharks, I mean.”

Flint remembered fishing with his grandfather. He remembered being out on his dogger for days at a time, the overwhelming stench of raw fish enough to overcast the freshness of the sea air. He remembered sneaking books on board, careful to hide them from his grandfather, careful to keep them neat and tidy, away from the fish guts and catching hooks and saltwater. He remembered creeping onto the deck on clear nights while his grandfather slept, trying to read by the reflection of moonlight cast by the gentle push of waves. It hadn’t been fun, or relaxing.

“We could find a lake nearby,” said Silver, “and try it.”

“Sure,” said Flint. “Let’s go fishing.”

* * *

Flint’s walk from the fort back to the tavern was unhurried. He leaned on his empty cart, not paying much attention to the village street. He was looking at the sky.

He’d seen incredible sunsets at sea. After the dreariness of England, the changing colors of an evening or early morning had been stunning at first, and he’d catch himself gaping in those first days with the Navy. But beautiful skies aren’t the kind of thing a soldier notices, and when he’d realized that, he’d stopped looking. Neither, too, do pirates appreciate the wide and ever-changing dance of light and color. Looking up was meant for navigation, for detecting the wind, for spotting an enemy flag, for catching an oncoming storm. You weren’t supposed to look at the sky and be reminded of a song, or a touch, or a poem.

But now he was old, and landlocked, and the sky wasn’t as vast on solid ground but still, it was beautiful. He watched the changes whenever he could. He ambled along the road, taking in the slashes of red, the bulbous pinks, the sprinkling pale blues. The stretch of lilac reaching towards the night like a returning lover. Every night it was different, and every night it was his favorite of all the skies he’d seen. By the time he’d reach the tavern, the show would be over, twilight giving everyone just enough to light their lanterns before dark truly fell.

But then he’d see Silver, which was an entirely different kind of sight altogether.

He was coming up to the tavern now, the first stars coming out, when a voice to his right called out, “Señor Santi!”

Flint blinked, straightening, as Señora Ramos approached, a cloud of dirty children tumbling around her feet. “Good evening, Señora,” he said.

Señora Ramos snorted. She looked frazzled, more so than usual, her hands ladened with a basket of goods. “I heard you have a new ass at your grove.”

“No,” said Flint. “He’s been living there since January.”

She didn’t look amused. “The _donkey_. You have a new one, yes?”

“Juan got him today,” said Flint. “Why?”

She put her basket in Flint’s cart and grabbed him by the elbow. She began to usher him behind a row of houses, saying, “See, I _thought_ I saw him riding it into town earlier, which is how I recognized it when I caught it eating apples from _my_ wagon.”

“ _What_?” Flint stopped. “Hang on, Señora, you must be mistaken. Juan has a _mule_ , and I watched him tie it out front of the taberna this aftern--” He looked over his shoulder at the tavern, and stopped speaking. Only lanterns lit the way, but there was enough to light to see there was no fucking mule around.

“I thought he was a sailor,” Señora Ramos said, pulling him along. “I thought sailors were supposed to be good at tying knots.”

They found Solomon chewing on some hay out the back of someone’s wagon, behind the town’s inn. He raised his head as they approached, maintaining eye contact with Flint as he chewed.

Faintly, Flint said, “Is that your wagon still?”

“That belongs to Eduardo,” she said. “He’s busy at the tanner right now.”

Flint looked at her. She looked back. Her children stared at both of them, waiting for the next move.

“I’ll pay you back for the apples,” said Flint finally. “But I’ll have to go get the coin.”

“He ate a whole barrel.”

“A whole -- !”

Señora Ramos raised an eyebrow. The kids held their collective breath. Solomon helped himself to more hay.

Flint sighed. “I have to go get the money.”

“I’ll be at the tavern in another hour,” she said with a firm nod. She took her basket and walked off in the other direction, children rushing after her like ducklings.

Flint grabbed Solomon’s reins, which dangled limply at his sides. The mule offered no resistance as Flint towed him away, watching to make sure Eduardo didn’t suddenly appear.

Solomon trotted by his side easily towards the tavern. Flint could see he was still chewing.

“I don’t know what gave you cause to believe your place here was in any way permanent,” Flint said lowly to the mule. “Let me assure you, this isn’t the case.”

Solomon blinked at him with one inky eye, lashes coated with hay dust.

“Sure, mules are sturdy creatures,” Flint went on, “but I’m an even sturdier creature, and accidents happen every day. And once they do, there really isn’t much to be done about it, not for mules. So believe me when I say, your continued existence in our life here relies solely on my continued grace and mercy, neither of which have ever been very long-lasting or reliable to begin with. Do you understand me?”

They were in front of the tavern now. Solomon huffed, stomping a little as Flint knotted and reknotted the rope around the front post.

“Let me speak plainer then,” said Flint, pointing at Solomon fiercely. “There’s a phrase for what I’d do to you. And that phrase is: _put you out of your misery_. And nothing would bring me greater satisfaction. Am I being perfectly fucking clear?”

Solomon licked his finger. Flint had no choice but to take that as an act of contrition.

When he entered the tavern, Silver was leaning on the bar, apron wrapped around his bony hips. He was grinning at Lily, who was telling him an animated story, whipping her dishrag around as she spoke. But he turned towards the door as soon as Flint came in, like he’d been waiting for Flint to arrive, which he knew to be true. Silver’s face didn’t change any, but the grin looked different anyway. Something to do with his eyes. He excused himself from Lily without even glancing at her.

“Hola Santi,” he said, voice soft, walking Flint over to his usual table. “Lua absolutely _loved_ Solomon. She said, and I’m quoting here, ‘ _Dear Jesus Christ up in Heaven, Juan, don’t you dare wind up killing that poor, innocent creature.’_ ”

Flint rolled his eyes, sitting down. Silver shifted on his crutch, holding his arms like he did to keep his hands occupied. His eyes were still doing that thing. He hadn’t loosened his hair since that morning. Even though Silver’s long hair made him weak, the whole of his face and neck exposed to the night like that made him feel weaker, wilder.

“You got any money on you?” Flint asked, pulling his book from his jacket pocket. “Solomon, it seemed, wanted some apples earlier.”

Silver’s grin, somehow, widened. “Aw, you got him a treat!” He gripped Flint’s shoulder as he passed behind him, heading into the kitchen. “I knew you’d warm up to him soon enough.”

* * *

Flint made Silver tie Solomon up outside three times before finally relenting and letting Silver come inside the house. Flint wouldn’t sleep if he even suspected Solomon was gorging himself on his oranges.

As they headed inside, Silver said that someone (Flint) would need to build Solomon a stable to keep him dry at night during the rainy season, or else someone (Silver) would be forced to bring him indoors, to which Flint replied that the only way Solomon was coming inside this house was if someone (Flint) was dining on horse meat. The conversation was then momentarily tabled when Silver took off his shirt.

Now they were both on the bed, naked, Silver writhing beneath him as Flint pressed hard, open mouth kisses below his navel. He sucked on the vein beneath the skin there, running a hand up to pinch one of Silver’s nipples.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Silver keened, knees digging sharply into Flint’s ribs. “Fuck, Captain, _please_.”

Flint was always ready to do what Silver asked of him, but when Silver begged, he was ready to do it with a smile. He swirled his tongue into Silver’s navel, pushing down on his hips when Silver bucked up with a high whine. He hadn’t undone his hair, but thick strands had come loose from the tie, and he looked messy and drunk already, without Flint ever touching his cock yet. He clutched the back of Flint’s head with both hands, not pulling him away but keeping him close, even as he pleaded for more.

“Please, Flint, fuck -- I need --” He threw his head against the bed, arching his back as Flint’s teeth grazed the trail on his abdomen. “ _Please_ , I _need_ \--”

Flint cupped Silver’s balls, lifting his cock up to his lips as his head was still held firmly in place. He placed another long kiss at the hairy base, along the rigid shaft, against the weeping head. He couldn’t control the moan he let out at the first taste of Silver’s pre-cum, didn’t have to control it. Silver pleaded, but Flint just wanted to give thanks. He wanted to thank every person he’d ever encountered, every interaction he’d ever had. He wanted to thank all the scoundrels, enemies, adversaries, traitors, Redcoats, thieves, whores, friends, crewmen, murderers, children, bystanders, drunkards, teachers, preachers, pirates, and ne’er-do-well cads he’d ever met in his life, for every one of them kept him on the path that led directly to this, to Flint on his knees in his own home on a warm summer night, with Silver’s cock in his mouth.

Silver said _please, please_ , and Flint sucked him down and thought _thank you, thank you_.

He moaned as he lowered his mouth all the way down with practiced ease, until his forehead rested on Silver’s stomach, still wet with his own spit. Silver shuddered at the vibrations, his hands tangled tightly in Flint’s hair, just hanging on. Flint’s own cock rubbed against the soft sheets of the bed, but he felt content to rut absently as he worked, sole focus on tasting Silver on the back of his tongue.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Silver groaned, eyes locked on Flint in wild wonder. “That’s so _good_ , Captain, fuck, that’s feels so good.”

Flint pulled back until just the tip rested in his mouth and sucked hard, smiling around him as Silver jerked and collapsed beneath him with another long whine. Flint went back down again, breathing hard through his nose as his tongue rolled along the shaft, tracing the vein, savoring the fullness of it, the salt taste and the spice smell. He turned his head, let Silver’s cock rub the inside of his cheek, knowing Silver loved how that looked.

Silver loosened a hand from his hair to rub his cock through Flint’s cheek, like always, and Flint groaned as Silver’s hips thrusted up once into his mouth. Spit dripped out of his mouth and onto Silver’s balls, and Flint rolled them in his palm, getting them fully wet in his hand.

“ _God_ , Flint,” Silver gasped. He was looking down at Flint again as he worked up and down on his cock. Flint couldn’t look away, lost in the growing black of Silver’s dilating eyes. “Oh -- _shit_ \-- _Flint,_  touch yourself, beautiful, stroke that gorgeous cock of yours, let me see, _please,_ you deserve to feel so _good_ , let me _see_ \-- _fuck_ \--”

Flint moaned again, rising up on his knees, just enough to keep his mouth on Silver’s cock and touch his own. His eyelids fluttered, as he squeezed his hard cock beneath him. Silver’s hands roamed down his back towards his arm, fingernails scratching lightly like they had been earlier today on his scalp, and suddenly Flint felt urgent and overwhelmed, working himself frantically as he sucked, and sucked, and _sucked_.

“Captain, I’m -- _fuck_ \-- “ And Flint stilled as Silver shouted and climaxed into his mouth, eager to catch it all. His hand slowed on his cock, lost in the taste of him, feeling some come slip out the corners of his lips. Then he worked himself faster, keeping Silver’s cock on his tongue as Silver twitched and gasped in relief. His hands still rubbed along Flint’s spine, murmuring soft encouragements, but it wasn’t until he ran his nails down his lower back, close to his ass, before Flint finally came all over himself, high whine muffled by Silver’s perfect cock.

The last thing Flint did, after letting go of his sensitive cock, after lowering himself off his knees, was take Silver out of his mouth. Panting, he rested on Silver’s thigh, mind still, uncaring of the wet spot he was lying in or the dampness beneath his cheek. He brought his messy hand up to his mouth to taste, knowing Silver was watching by the way he shuddered underneath him, hand tightening for a second as he stroked Flint’s hair.

When he could finally breathe again, Flint said, “The fucking warship.”

“The fucking warship,” Silver agreed. Flint didn’t need to look either to hear his smile, to feel his contented sigh.

“Why that day?” Flint asked. “I don’t remember that being a particular enjoyable time.”

Silver said nothing at first, but tugged on the back of Flint’s head until he was looking up at him. His eyes were still dilated, just like they’d been one afternoon a long time ago, in the depths of an enemy warship, when he’d angrily hissed at Flint all the ways in which he cared.

“That was my first taste,” said Silver, still stroking his hair, “of it being the two of us against the world. It took me a long time to admit to myself how much I liked it. I knew that day that you were destined for me -- either to be my end, or to be with me until the end.”

Flint sighed, eyes closing for a moment as he leaned into the soft caresses again. “Even then, you knew?”

“To be fair,” Silver said, “At the time, I was pretty sure it would be the former.”

Flint huffed a small laugh, but said nothing. He traced absently on Silver’s other thigh with his own saliva. He rubbed his beard along Silver’s skin, smiling to himself at the goosebumps that rose.

“What are you thinking about?” Silver asked quietly.

Flint looked at Silver. “I’m thinking about building a stable.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’d look good in silks”_ Flint said in the last chapter, and a bunch of y'all made me eat those words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for women's underwear on men's bodies

One evening after work, Flint is reading in his favorite chair when Silver walks in and says, “I have a surprise for you.”

It’s one of the most terrifying things Flint has ever heard.

“....Okay,” Flint says, slowly closing his book.

“Obviously, it’s not much of a surprise if I tell you there’s a surprise.” Silver shifts strangely on his foot, hovering near the end of the hallway. He looks pinker than usual in the candlelight, like he’d just had a warm bath. His hair is tied up again, but it’s loose and messy from an evening in the kitchens. “But I thought if I didn’t warn you at all, your heart might give out."

Then he adds, somewhat unnecessarily, “It’s a sexual surprise.”

“I’d gathered,” Flint says. “What’s the occasion?”

“None,” Silver admits, shuffling again. “I just -- felt like it.” Which is also, in fact, incredibly terrifying.

“I never get to give you anything,” Flint says, beginning to rise.

Silver scowls. “You’re an idiot. And wait!” He holds a hand out. “I’m not ready yet. I’m only….half ready. I’ll call you in just a moment.”

As he’s turning away, Flint asks, “How do you know I’ll like it?”

The smile Silver gives over his shoulder is only somewhat filthy, his eyes soft and fluttery. “At one point, Captain, I found you to be the most enigmatic sort of man. Now, you’re about as unknown to me as my own mind. You're like an open window on a sunny day. I’ll call you in a moment.” He returns to the bedroom.

Flint returns to his chair. He’s never been as sure of himself as Silver was, unless he was sailing or leading a battle or growing oranges. He can’t imagine what that must be like, to not only know your own mind completely but to know someone else’s as well. He picks up his book again but doesn’t open it. Two minutes ago, he’d been having such a normal night.

He’s trying to think what the fuck Silver could be planning. Every thought makes warmth spread throughout his body, but nothing he thinks of is actually _surprising_. They’ve had quite a few evenings, making up for lost time, discovering each other’s bodies, and then re-discovering them in different places. Their exploits are much more...imaginative than Flint had experienced with other lovers, and they aren’t always Silver’s idea alone. But Silver just brings things out of him. He and Silver exist on their own island here in the middle of a sea of orange, and the feeling of isolation that had initially caused when he’d been alone, with Silver now it feels like nothing else but pure, uncontainable freedom.  

Flint can’t imagine what Silver is planning. He always ends up saying some stupid shit while they’re being intimate, and he’d always hopes Silver is too blissed out to remember any of it.

“Okay!” Silver calls out, and Flint’s heart jumps. He takes a deep breath. Silver did give him a warning, but in typical fashion, hadn’t given him _any_ time to _prepare_. He sets his book down and stands. He maintains a steady, even pace as he heads into the bedroom.

Silver had lit several lanterns, and the room is blazing. Flint doesn’t see them, though. Silver had left his crutch propped up against the wall. Flint doesn’t see that either.

Silver is on the bed. His hair is still loosely up. The bedsheet is crumpled near the end of the bed. He’s sitting up against the badly carved headboard wearing a pair of women’s undergarments. They’re of ivory silk, making Silver’s skin look darker than usual, and rather plainly adorned, with soft lace edges clinging tightly to his hips. They cling tightly everywhere, the outline of his cock plainly visibly, solidly straining against the thin material.

He’s also wearing a pale green robe, spread around him like palm fronds. The robe has delicate pink flowers embroidered all over, and Silver’s fingers trace some of them over and over. It’s the only sign of anxiousness. His face is still pink, his bare chest gleaming with sweat and rising with each breath, and he’s still wearing women’s pants.

“You mentioned once,” he says boldly, still fiddling with the stitching, “about seeing me in silks.”

Flint is stuck in the doorway. He’s _stuck._ Silver was right about a total surprise potentially causing heart failure. Flint had been right about seeing Silver in silk.

He’s stuck, staring, gripping the doorframe. He can’t think of anything to say. He has no words.

Silver draws up his knee, his legs spreading wide enough for Flint to see his balls peeking out from the beneath of the bottom of the silk. But he must get even more anxious about Flint’s silence, because he starts to pull the robe over him, saying, “If this wasn’t --”

Flint stalks forward, and it’s as good as if he covered Silver’s mouth with his hand. Silver is looking at him with wide eyes, and Flint still can’t think of anything to say. Instead, he crawls in between Silver’s legs and presses his open mouth against Silver’s clothed cock.

“Oh!” Silver jerks up against him, thighs squeezing around Flint’s head. That’s fine with Flint. He runs his hands over Silver’s silk-covered ass, pulling him closer as he sucks hard on his cock. “ _Fuck_ , Flint, _oh --_ fuck!” He lets out a breathy laugh. “Like an open fucking window.”

Silver’s gripping at Flint’s hair, at his shirt, almost like he’s trying to pull him off, like the sensation may be too much for him, but Flint can’t stop. He licks until the silk pants as soaked and translucent, until he can make out the red tint of Silver’s hard cock through the material.

“You look so fucking _gorgeous,_ ” Flint rasps. His tongue is dry from the cloth, so he uses his lips to worry up the length, until he catches the wet tip sticking out of the top and he sucks it into his mouth.

Silver groans, curling over his head. He scratches at Flint’s back desperately, grabbing his shirt in tight fistfuls.

“Fuck, Flint, take this _off_ ,” he says, bucking up into Flint’s mouth. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking, getting into bed still fucking _dressed?_ ”

Clearly, obviously, Flint hadn’t been thinking anything at all, but he doesn’t disagree with Silver. And so with all the strength of will his hard life has granted him, he wrenches himself as swiftly as possible away from the taste of Silver’s pre-cum and moves to stand by the side of the bed.

“Where the fuck did you get this stuff?” he asks, tearing his shirt off. At least he’d already taken off his shoes when he’d sat down with his book.

Silver sits up to help Flint remove his belt. “Stole them from the brothel. I figured, if a whore is doing her job right, she doesn’t _need_ the clothes.”

Flint blinks at him, hands tucked into the back of his trousers. “St. Augustine has a brothel?”

Silver stops stroking his stomach salaciously to look at Flint, his expression changing from incredulous to fondness with one flutter of his eyelashes. “Anywhere a man resides, there you’ll find a whorehouse. But I love how it doesn’t even cross your mind.” He pushes Flint’s trousers to the ground, wraps his arms around Flint’s lower back to pull him closer, and bites down gently onto the skin above his ribs.

“ _Fuck_ _,_ ” Flint gasps, before lowering himself unceremoniously into Silver’s lap. He gasps again at the feel of Silver’s cock, and the wet silk, rubbing against his own. He tangles his fingers into Silver’s hair, finally tugging it loose from its knot, and pulls him in for a deep kiss.

Flint hasn't sailed on a ship in six years. He had never kissed Silver while sailing. But even so, every time their lips touch, Flint feels like he's back at sea. The authority he felt, the power, in a tenuous struggle against the raw, unyielding might of a rolling ocean -- his heart beats with the exact same rhythm it did then. Whenever Silver slides his tongue into Flint’s mouth, the same exhilaration fills him, the same fear, the same control. He can even hear the rush of the waves filling his ears, and they sound just like his moans and Silver’s, crashing together between them.

Silver sucks Flint’s bottom lip into his mouth, tugging slightly before releasing him. “Wait a moment,” he breathes, shuffling back some, leaving Flint kneeling by the bed. He whips off the silk robe and throws it over Flint. “In this home, we share our sins. And I got this color just for you.”

Flint slides his arms into the sleeves without thinking about it. The material isn't cold like he’s expecting, warmed by Silver’s body. He shivers, looking down at himself. The pale green silk spills all the way to the bed, framing his thighs. Curiously, he covers his chest with it, presses down on the front of his belly, rubs his nipple through the material and groans.

“God _,_ " Silver growls, pulling him by the wrists until Flint was back in his lap. He strokes Flint’s back and ass through the silk. “As soon as I saw that hanging on the line, I knew I had to get it for you. That color, with your _skin._ Your _hair, fuck_. You're so fucking _pretty_ like this.”

Flint’s breathing hard, slowing grinding his cock down in even circles, and feels like this might have gotten away from him somewhat. He thinks the initial idea had been to fuck Silver in these clothes, but he isn’t thinking that way any more. This isn't unusual for them, and never has been. They've always been equal things to each other, long before Flint could admit it, and when Flint wants to _take_ , Silver always wants to _give._

At the end of some nights, Flint feels like a king, and at the end of others, he feels owned -- and either way, he always, _always_ , feels worshipped.

“Please,” he groans, hands splayed on Silver’s ribs to keep balance as he rubs himself against Silver’s ivory pants. “ _Please_ , Silver, I _need_ \--”

“I know,” Silver says soothingly, already reaching for the jar of oil he’d made sure was near. “I know, darling.”

Silver drips some of the oil on Flint’s exposed cock, strokes him once just to hear him wail, and then he slips his slick hand beneath the robe, his other hand caressing Flint’s neck and hair. Flint hisses, then sighs in something like relief as Silver slides two fingers inside him. Flint can feel Silver’s cock, still trapped beneath damp silk and blood-hot against his own and he needs it _now._ He fucks back onto Silver’s fingers mindlessly, and he’s begging by the time Silver adds a third finger and begins to scissor him open.

Silver looks up at him in awe, fingers plunging hard into his ass. “ _God_ , I can't believe you. Have you ever felt this beautiful before? You’re always stunning, but -- _fuck_ \--”

Flint can’t listen to that anymore, feels like his face is _glowing_ with heat, so he gets a hand between them and pushes Silver’s pants down, just low enough to get his cock out but keep his balls trapped inside the tight silk. Silver jerks forward with the sudden press of bare skin on skin, bringing their chests flushed together.  

“This was -- _shit, oh_ \-- “ Flint can barely keep track of each sensation: cock grinding against Silver’s, thighs straining to spread his legs wide, asshole stretching and full, Silver’s harsh panting on his cheek, and the soft, delicate fabric rubbing all over his overheated skin. “This was -- supposed to be about seeing _you_ in sil--”

Silver’s fingers curl inside him pressing down on the bundle of nerves, and choking him on his words. His other hand clutches the back of Flint’s head. He kisses him again, long enough for Flint to almost smell the sea salt in the air, and then pushes until Flint’s looking down at their bodies. He rests their foreheads together, and without slowing down his fingers, says, “So _look_.”

Flint watches their cocks sliding together, shiny with pre-cum and oil. He watches Silver take a fistful of the silk robe, where it had been pooling around his knee, and wrap it around their cocks. He watches Silver begin to stroke them through the robe, and then his eyes sqeeze shut, because he’d wanted to see Silver in silk the same way he’d wanted five million in Spanish dollars, and just like then, the _want_ might just kill him.

He’s stuck again, this time held and fucked on both sides in Silver’s hands. The cool green silk on his cock and back, the blunt ends of Silver’s fingers curling and stretching, and the high sweet moans slipping from Silver’s mouth and onto Flint’s lips as he thrusts up to meet him -- Flint is stuck like he’s trapped in amber and maybe that’s why everything looks slow and golden.

The room looks gold, but all Flint can think, all he can say is, “Silver, _Silver_ , God, _Silver --_ ”

Silver hums like he’s agreeing, noses at Flint’s shoulder until the robe slips down over it, and bites down hard. Flint arches into it with a cry, clenching down on Silver’s fingers, scratching at his back as he comes all over the robe.

Silver keeps stroking them together, keeps fucking him with his fingers, and Flint knows the sounds he’s making are ridiculous and needy, face pressed into Silver’s neck, but he can’t do anything about it. Not when Silver’s rigid flesh is still gliding along his oversensitive cock, and not when Silver is mouthing wetly at his throat. But just when Flint is about to do something, change position so Silver doesn’t actually drive him out of his fucking mind, Silver stiffens beneath him, and the groan he emits directly into Flint’s ear sounds shocked and uncontrollable as he climaxes onto Flint’s cock. Flint finds he’s smiling into Silver’s skin. He isn’t the only one who got a surprise tonight.  

“ _Jesus_ ,” Silver breathes. He slowly slides his fingers out of Flint and falls all the way backwards on the bed. Flint, naturally, goes with, the unstained parts of the robe spreading out over them. Silver exhales heavily with the weight, but makes sure to wrap his arms around Flint so he doesn’t try to move. “That went -- differently than I was picturing. Not bad. Just -- different. A good different.”

Flint hums, pressing a light kiss behind Silver’s ear. He feels Silver shiver under him, and smiles at the way Silver tilts his head to give Flint a better angle. This is how it went every night. They’d spend the whole day being unable to touch each other, being unable to kiss or look like they _want_ to kiss because there was someone always around, so the first go of the evening would always been quick and frantic, clutching at each other like they’d spent years not touching instead of hours. Then they’d lie together, talking and teasing, sometimes dozing, sometimes reading, until the candles had burned halfway into the night and the closeness of each other stopped being just a comfort and turned into something more tantalizing. It means they don’t sleep all that much, but it also means less nightmares, less pacing in the dark. It works for them.

Although Flint doesn’t think the silks will enter into the situation later tonight, at any rate. They barely made it through one fuck without being completely ruined.

“I’m glad we finally reached the same conclusion, by the way,” Silver says, fingers running along the flowers again, this time the ones on Flint’s back.

“What’s that?”

“That we’re both bloody gorgeous,” Silver says.

Flint snorts, and nips at Silver’s earlobe. He says, “I still need to get you something. It isn’t right, if you’re the only one surprising me.”

Silver tugs on Flint’s hair until they’re face to face. “You’re still an idiot,” Silver says again with another scowl. “Every day I wake up and you’re there, I’m surprised. Every time you kiss me, you’re giving me the only thing I’ve ever wanted my whole rotten, shitting, fucking life.”

Flint blinks at him, frowning as he thinks. “You told me once,” he says slowly, “that all you ever wanted was freedom.” He adds, “One big prize.”

Silver sighs and smiles. “Yeah,” he says, kissing him again, lingers on Flint’s bottom lip. “ _Now_ you get it.”

  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 gifts silver receives

**i,**

The mid-morning heat is thick and relentless, and Flint’s standing on a ladder in his grove, feeling the sweat drip down his spine, thinking about how there’s really no relief from this weather, not even in September, when suddenly he remembers Silver telling him he was born in the summertime.

He freezes, arm outstretched towards an orange. He remembers Silver telling him he didn’t know when the exact day was, but he just chose a new summer day each year to mark the occasion.

The autumnal equinox is next week. Summer is _over_. And Flint hadn’t done anything. Silver hadn’t said _anything_. Perhaps it was payback for Flint failing to mention his own birthday. Perhaps he’d simply forgotten, too.

Still. Flint should have remembered.

He throws a few more oranges into his barrel before heading back to the house. He barely pays attention to where he’s stepping. He’s _thinking_.

He hasn’t celebrated anyone’s birthday in years, and he’s never been very good at it. He can’t throw Silver a party. The idea of having anyone else in their home was unthinkable, lest anyone get the idea that they might actually be _welcome_ there. He could maybe arrange something at the tavern, but Lua would have to be involved, and then the whole town would show up, certainly the whole of her church. He doesn’t think Silver would really want a gathering of that size, but Flint knows for certain _he’d_ be unlikely to attend.

Flint likes the private world they’ve carved out for themselves. It’s the only sure thing he’s ever had in his life, the only time something good wasn’t at least partially clouded with underlying fear. Just because he’s become friendlier with his neighbors the last few months doesn’t mean he wants to invite them into his and Silver’s world.

He’s silent, still thinking, as he and Silver head into town. Silver doesn’t question his silence. It happens, sometimes, to the both of them. Bad dreams, dark thoughts, cold reveries will leave them feeling tense and withdrawn all day, going through their daily motions without much thought, too lost in their own heads. Fortunately, this has yet to happen to both of them at the same time, so the other always knows to step back, to be patient, to wait for the sun to set and for them to get back home. Then they’d crawl to each other, leaving the candles unlit, and the one who’d been quiet all day would finally make a noise -- a soft, uncontrollable sigh in the dark.

Except this morning, the only demon that plagued Flint is this: he is terrible at giving gifts.

He likes things to have _use,_ but Silver doesn’t really need anything. He has plenty of clothes and boots, and he doesn’t like hats. His knife is beloved, his guns must be kept locked away, and his sword is rusting in the cellar. He bought himself a mule.  His crutch is in relatively good shape, but even so, it’s not like Flint is going to buy Silver a new _crutch_ for his _birthday_. Perhaps he could whittle him something, like a flute.

Flint dismisses that idea immediately. He can already picture the destruction caused by giving Silver something that made even more noise.

With an internal sigh, he realizes he only has one idea that could work, even though it’s a terrible idea, the most pathetic gift he always, _always_ , falls back on -- a book.

The first time he’d wanted to give Miranda a birthday present, Thomas had been spectacularly unhelpful. The beautiful and lavish things Miranda enjoyed were not the kinds of things he could afford on a Lieutenant’s salary. Thomas suggested something from the heart, which also wasn’t something he had a lot of, even back then. In a desperate act, he’d stopped by a bookshop and begged the owner for a suggested title a woman might enjoy, and he’d bought the first one the shopkeeper offered.

When Miranda read the title aloud, “ _Of Domestic Duties by William Gouge_ ,” Flint had thought she and Thomas were having a combined fit, they were laughing at him so hard. He remembers blushing heavily, apologizing profusely when he realized what the book was, and sinking to his knees as Miranda hiked up her skirts so he could make it up to her.

So, at least that fallback is still an option for him.

He hurries with his afternoon deliveries, so he might get to the small bookseller in time to actually pay attention to what he’s buying.

No one in St. Augustine can make a living just selling books, and the shop sells a variety of other paper goods, and also acts as the mailing station in town. The selection of books is small, many of them religious, none of them originally by an Englishman. Flint finds nothing. Or rather, plenty _he_ might want to read, but nothing that strikes him as something for Silver.

Silver isn’t really a _reader_. He reads, certainly, and has read most of Flint’s books by now, but he doesn’t get the same kind of joy Flint does from reading. Already this is a terrible gift.

“Santiago,” Luis, the owner of the shop, says after watching Flint rifle through his collection silently for almost an hour longer than he’d intended. “Please. Let me help you. I’d like to go home sometime tonight.”

Flint is hesitant to trust another bookseller after what happened in London. But Luis has given him recommendations in the past for himself that have proved successful.

“It’s for Juan,” Flint admits. “I’m not sure what he likes. I’ve only ever seen him read my books.”

“So pick something out for yourself,” says Luis reasonably, “and give it to him instead.”

“Then it won’t feel like it’s _for him_ ,” says Flint, and then adds, feeling a little exposed, “I -- missed his birthday.”

Luis nods sympathetically, and helps Flint look through the same titles he’d been staring at for ages. Eventually, the sun begins to set, and he’s late for dinner, and it’s not like he’s got a time limit for this because it’s a surprise, but he’s set himself on this course and he’d like to finish it _now._

“Have you ever read Queveda?” Luis asks.

Flint hasn’t.

“Take this one,” he says, taking the book from behind his counter, away from the other collection. Flint can see the name _Francisco de Queveda_ in faded gold leaf on the spine. “It’s one of my favorite. Your cousin has a strange humor about him. I think he’ll enjoy it. Go on, now. You’re starting to annoy me.”

Flint thanks him, and pays him, shoving the book into his cart as he heads to the tavern.

Silver is tight-lipped and a little pale, waiting for Flint outside the kitchen. His hands are clenched at his side, and when he sees Flint enter the tavern, his shoulders visibly sag.

“Sorry,” Flint says, a bit breathlessly as he sits at his table. “A wheel on the cart fell off, and I had to stop and fix it.”

Silver knows it’s a lie, and Flint knows he knows, but it’s fine because Flint will tell him the truth later that night when he gives him the book and then he’ll suck him off -- both things he’d much rather do in private.

Silver is still glaring at him, ready to push it, when Lua approaches. “See? He’s not dead. Now will you get back to work? These people have hungry.”

Silver is short with him the rest of the night, no matter how hard Flint tries to convey that everything is _fine_ , there’s _nothing_ to worry about, this is actually a _nice_ thing. Silver has surprised Flint with things before and he’d never suspected a thing, why is this so difficult? At least any notion of backing out and not giving him the stupid gift is out the window. Silver would never let it go now.

When they’re leaving, Silver isn’t even out the door before he starts. “What --”

“Wait,” says Flint. “At home. _Truly_ , it’s not an issue, I promise.”

Fuming, Silver mounts his mule and is deadly silent the whole way home. This is a nightmare. This is the worst gift-giving ever.

They’re only a quarter mile from home when Flint gives in. “Fucking _fine,”_ he snarls, stopping in the middle of the road. “I wanted to do this like normal fucking people, but since we are utterly incapable of being anything other than the most dramatic, _here_.”

He thrusts the book up into Silver’s hands, who has no choice to but to grab it. He can see the anger melting into confusion on Silver’s face in their single lit lantern.

“What is it?”

“A book,” says Flint. “For you.” He grits his teeth. “For your birthday.”

“My _what?_ ”

“You said you were born in the summer. It’s almost autumn now. We didn’t celebrate, so.”

Silver says nothing, staring down at the book he’s gripping with both hands. He doesn’t look back at Flint.

“Oh,” is all he says.

It’s a terrible gift, and Flint knows that, so he’s not surprised by the reaction. He just sighs, and continues on his way to the house.

Silver is a pace behind him. Flint glances over his shoulder once, and sees Solomon the mule doing all the work. Silver is still looking at the book.

“I can’t make out the title,” Silver says softly.

“ _Francisco_ something. A history,” Flint says, looking back at the road. “Luis’s recommendation. I’ve never read it.”

Silver doesn’t respond.

When they reach the house, Silver dismounts and walks quickly inside, leaving Flint to tie up Solomon and unload his cart. Flint feels a little annoyed now, if only because he’s not sure how to change Silver’s attitude to one that wants to get his cock sucked.

Except when Flint walks inside, Silver already has the fire going, his shoe off, and he’s curled up in Flint’s reading chair, new book opened in his lap.

“Oh,” Flint says. He shifts awkwardly in the doorway. “You’re going to -- read it now?’

Silver hums. He doesn’t even look up when he says, “Just for a bit.”

Flint fiddles with his fingers. “I was going to….” He trails off, not wanting to just come out and _say_ it, but Silver doesn’t even bother to press him.

After a moment, Flint joins him, sitting down to mend his boots, and then Silver’s, and then a couple shirts, and a belt that he can’t remember who it belongs to, and Silver is immobile the whole time in his chair, except for turning of pages.

Finally, Flint gets up. “I’m going to bed.”

Silver murmurs something inaudible, and Flint is going to let it go, walks by the chair to do just that, but then Silver grabs his hand as he passes. He doesn’t look up from his book, but he lifts Flint’s fingers to his mouth, absently presses a long kiss into his knuckles, and mutters something like, “Sleep well.”

Flint does.

The next morning, though, he’s alone in bed as usual, but when he leaves the bedroom, he finds Silver right where he left him, head still in his book.

It’s not _that_ big of a book.

“What the fuck?” Flint asks, standing in the entryway.

Silver blinks at him. At some point in the night he must have moved, because he’d taken off his shirt and undone his hair. He looks utterly exhausted but he still smiles at Flint. “Good morning.”

“You’ve been reading all night?” Flint asks. “Why on Earth -- “

“I was reading it again,” Silver says, finally shutting the book. It rests on his chest, along with his hands. “Or maybe this is the third time. I can’t recall.”

“Jesus, Silver.” He swiftly removes the book from Silver’s person and holds it away from him, like it might be dangerous. “You realize you weren’t expected to memorize the damn thing before throwing it into another fire, right?”

Silver closes his eyes and smiles widely, but says nothing.

“Come on, get up,” Flint says, grabbing his crutch. “I suppose you liked the book, then?”

“God, no,” says Silver. “It’s awful.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Well, the first time around was pretty bad.” Silver still has his eyes closed. “The second time around, I started to get the joke, once I’d remembered you saying you hadn’t actually read it before. Do you know what _The Swindler_ is about?”

“The what?” Feeling a horrible, lurking sense of deja vu, Flint opens the book to the title page. It turns out, Francisco de Quevedo is the name of the _author_.

The full title of the book is, _History of the life of the Swindler, called Don Pablos, model for hobos and mirror of misers._

“Oh, no,” says Flint.

“I spent the whole first readthrough,” Silver says, yawning, “trying to figure out what about this tale of a foolish young _picaro_ failing through multiple calamities to become someone worthy, reminded _you_ of _me_ , and it was only when I recalled you saying you hadn’t read it that prevented me from waking you up by throwing it at your sleeping head.”

“I’m sorry,” says Flint. “You know I don’t --”

“I know.” Now he opens his eyes, and they’re tired eyes but not angry ones. 

“I had been planning on sucking your cock last night, too, you know,” Flint adds. “But you were too absorbed in this.”

Silver looks away from him. He’s looking, Flint realizes, at the book again. “No one’s ever given me a birthday present before,” he says.

Flint has these urges sometimes -- strange, alien impulses that strike him as hard and sudden as a kick to the back of the head. He’s only ever felt it a few instances in his life, which may be why it feels so strong and so wild to him: a fierce, overwhelming, powerful sense of protectiveness. He gives into it every time.

He gets Silver standing, propping him up on his crutch. He smooths some of the hair out of his face as an excuse to rest his hand in Silver’s hair. “You’re going to sleep for a few hours while I’m in the grove. I’ll take Solomon to make my morning stops and then double back for you, so you can rest more before work.”

“You won’t have much time,” Silver mutters, drooping against him. At one time in their lives, they’d both been able to stay up for days on end, anger and paranoia and fear keeping them too sharp and too on edge to sleep. Flint knows he’s softened in the years he’d been in St. Augustine, and it thrills him beyond measure to see it happening to Silver, too.

“It’ll take me less time than usual without you there,” Flint points out. “I don’t chat.”

Silver kisses him, cupping his face with two hands. He’s sleep-warm, despite not having any, and his lips move soft and wet against his own. Flint holds his side to keep him steady, his other hand still clutching at his hair and neck to keep _himself_ steady. The sun has finally crested the horizon outside, the rays streaking in through the kitchen window, already heating Flint’s back, and he’s never felt so goddamn comfortable in his entire life.

Then suddenly, the kiss becomes heavier, as though all of Silver’s weight is behind it, but at the same time Silver stills against him, his mouth lax, hands limply falling to Flint’s chest. Flint blinks, pulling back a little, and his suspicions are confirmed when Silver tilts forward with him, lips still on Flint’s. He’d fallen asleep mid-kiss. He even lets out a little snore.

Flint gently pushes Silver back and holds him upright. The movement seems to jolt him awake, and he stares at Flint blearily.

“You don’t really think I’m a swindler, do you?” he asks quietly.

“No.” Again, Flint is struck by that wild impulse, so he kisses Silver softly between the eyes. He feels Silver slump against him like he might drift off again. “Although, I haven’t read the book yet, so I can't say for certain.”

“You can borrow it, if you like,” Silver murmurs, sounding tired but not unhappy. “I have a copy of my own.”

 

**ii,**

Flint wakes up with a sudden hiss and a sharp pain on his scalp. He touches the back of his head reflexively, and finds Silver's fingers.

“Sorry,” Silver says, voice hushed because the room is dark, only a single low candle spluttering in death, and that is how one speaks in a room like this. “Your hair snagged on one of my rings.”

Flint had been dead asleep, that kind of sleep where half his skull and his whole right arm feels fuzzy and disconnected. He’d been drooling on Silver’s chest, and feels his own saliva beneath his cheek. Silver didn't seem to mind it, but then he likely still has some of Flint’s other fluids drying on him as well.

“It's exceedingly difficult to braid at this angle,” Silver says, “and in this light.”

Flint’s hair just feels tangled and knotted. He turns his face, rested his chin on the hard dip of Silver’s breastbone, and brings his arm back around Silver. “It doesn't help that you don't actually have any idea what you're doing,” he says.

“That's never been an issue for me before,” Silver says. His eyes are warm and sleepy, in that way that suggests he's yet to actually sleep.

“I got you another gift today,” Flint says, suddenly remembering. “I left it out in the cart.”

“What?” Silver frowns. “Why?”

“Because the last time I gave you something, you were too distracted to fuck me.” Flint shifted without lifting any part of his body from Silver’s skin, so they both could feel every part of each other. “I wasn't about to take that risk again.”

“No, I mean, why another gift?” Autumn had officially come last week, despite the heat being as oppressive as ever. There's no longer any possibility that today is Silver's birthday.

“I went to see Luis today to yell at him about his shitty fucking book recommendation.” This time, he’d informed Silver of his planned errands, though he'd only mentioned the few things for the house he’d intended to buy, not that he'd been planning to stop and curse Luis and all booksellers to the Hell from whence they came. “Once I was there, I saw something that caught my eye.”

“Another book?” Silver is still smirking but his tone is teasing, and Flint refuses to flush.

“Yes,” says Flint. “I mean, no. Not really. It's a diary.”

“Oh,” says Silver. “Whose?”

“ _Yours.”_ Flint rolls his eyes. “It's blank. I also picked up some charcoals. I have some ink around the house somewhere, but I wasn't sure what you’d prefer.”

“You got me a diary?” Silver’s eyebrows had shot up his forehead, and he looks as confused as when Flint gave him the swindling book. For fuck’s sake, he’d thought he’d found something _different_ and therefore _better_ than a book.

“You're a storyteller,” Flint says with a short shrug. “I thought you’d enjoy writing some of them down. I used to do a bit of it myself, before you showed up. Mostly autobiographical, which was -- a way to release somethings. Helped me sleep some nights. Sometimes I wrote fictions, though. A few poems, that sort of thing.”

Silver's eyebrows had yet to return to normal, though now he is smiling. “You wrote poetry?”

“And promptly burned them,” Flint says immediately. He wishes he had the energy to move up and bite the pout off Silver’s lips. “But I thought you might enjoy doing the same.”

Silver hums, thinking about it. Then he pushes hard on Flint’s shoulder. “Go get it.”

“What?”

“Go get it,” Silver repeats, still trying to nudge him off. “I want it now. You left it outside! Solomon’s probably eaten it by now. Fetch it, quickly.”

Flint has no idea what time it is. He has no idea where his pants are. Silver's body is so warm and solid. If the house was on fire right now, he’d rather burn than move. 

“An interesting proposal,” he says, tightening his arm around Silver’s waist. “But might I posit an alternative suggestion?”

He only has to shift a little to get Silver’s nipple in his mouth. He’d paid them much attention earlier, too, so he could feel the slight heat from fading beard burn under his tongue already. That doesn't stop him from sucking on the pink bud remorselessly, hard enough and long enough to bruise.

Silver jerks up under him, hands clutching at Flint's hair.  “That's -- _oh!_ That’s…Flint, you fuck, how the fuck am I going to wear a shirt tomorrow if you keep at it?”

Flint pulls off -- eventually -- tugging lightly with his front teeth as he goes, just to make Silver cry out and dig his nails into Flint’s neck. “So, don’t,” he say, and moves over to the next one.

* * *

Silver doesn't actually work the next day, so after picking oranges, Flint finds him sitting at the kitchen table, with his shirt still off. Lua had made a show of saying she couldn't afford to pay Silver to work every day, but then privately told him that Lily needed more practice with cooking or she’ll never find a husband.

Silver had offered to teach her, but Lua had snorted and said, “What do _you_ know about cooking for a _husband_?” Silver had only barely been able to stop himself from answering.

Silver looks up now from his new journal, sees Flint smirking at his still flushed chest, and scowls as he closes his book. He has smudges of charcoal on his fingers, which Flint enjoys the look of, too.

“Do you like it?” Flint asks as he walks by. He stops to press a kiss into Silver’s hair. It still smells of spices from last night’s dinner. He’d meant to just pass, needing to get ready to go out, but instead he lingers.

“I’ve never had anything like it,” says Silver over his shoulder. Then he says, for a second time, “Thank you.”

“I -” Flint pauses. He’s still standing behind Silver, holding his chair. Silver’s hand still rests on the cover of the diary. “You don’t have to, of course, but if you wanted, I’d be happy to read anything you write.”

Silver doesn't say anything at first. He leans back in his chair and looks up at Flint. Flint has to grab the back of the headrest to keep from touching Silver’s neck. _He_ still has to work today.

“Sure,” Silver says softly. “If it's any good.”

* * *

Silver doesn't show him anything.

He's had the diary for a week now, and he's yet to share any of its contents. Flint knows he's using it, at any rate, head bent over it in the early mornings, when he'd used to just stare out the window until Flint woke up, or in the evenings before bed, while Flint read by candlelight. Any spare moment he had, it seems, was reserved for the diary.

Silver had opted for the charcoals, and had to be reminded every day by Lua to wash his hands clean of it before starting dinner. Flint enjoyed the smudges endlessly, so much so that he found himself with charcoal marks of his own, on his hips or ass or cock. He had to be careful before going out in public to make sure he had nothing incriminating visible, even though it pained him to remove the evidence.

Flint hadn't realized how much he liked being marked.

But Silver had never offered to share his writing, and Flint had never asked again. He wasn't secretive about his work, and didn't do it in the same fits of passion Flint had. Occasionally he would frown and sigh at the pages and close the cover with a huff, or read over what he spent all day writing with a smile before moving on to the next one.

They spent so much of their time in each other's pockets, and Flint is fine if Silver wants to keep this thing private.

Except one morning, Flint finds Silver at the table as usual. He's walking behind and normally Silver will close his diary to greet him, but he's too focused on his work to notice Flint, and Flint just happens to be looking at Silver because he's _always_ looking at Silver, and he sees what's on the page.

It's not writing.

“Is that -- Solomon?”

Silver sighs. “Well if you have to ask,” he says, pushing the book onto the table, but leaving it lying flat, “then I guess it isn't. I’ve been coming back to it since yesterday.” 

“No, it looks just like him.” Flint sits down, and after a momentary hesitation, tugs the book closer. “I was just expecting writing. Not--”

On the left side of the page is a perfect profile of Solomon the mule. Silver has managed to shade his coat perfectly, so he looks far shinier than the dusty beast normally looks. He even got the bright look of life in Solomon’s eyes. It's stunning.

Silver sighs again. “The words wouldn't come. I stopped trying after the first day. It's easier to give a speech and come up with something off the cuff, when your life depends on it, then to plan something out.”

“And sketching…?”

“Something I used to do when I was younger.”

Flint looks at Silver hard, but Silver doesn't give any further hint of where he learned to draw or why. He also doesn't tell Flint to stop when he flips to the first page.

It's all drawings. The first few pages have nothing concrete, nothing completed. Half-drawn hands and eyes, the outline of a cat, the profile of a woman, the shape of a tree. Like he was just remembering how to draw.

Then the subjects start to get more defined, beginning with a profile of Flint. It might be Flint when he was younger, his hair tied back how he used to and his face angrier than it had been in years. On the other half of the page, it looks like Silver had drawn another picture of Flint, except facing outwards, but only one side of it had been completed, the rest had been scribbled out.

“It's difficult to get both sides looking the same,” Silver explains when he catches Flint staring at the scratched out portrait. “Human faces are too dynamic, even from memory. It's hard to get both sides right and it still looks like who it's meant to.”

There are many drawings of cats, incredibly lifelike and detailed, that Flint supposes were actually modeled from the ones that sat on the table with him before breakfast every morning. There are more portraits, too, with enough likeness that Flint could identify who everyone is meant to be. People from town, like Lua and Lily and Señor Fernandez, or from the old days, Billy and Joji and Randall.

Flint lingers on those for awhile, because even though things hadn't ended well with them, Flint realizes he’d almost forgotten what they looked like.

There are a couple portraits he didn't recognize at all, an old woman, a child, a young man. But when he asks, Silver just says, “It doesn't matter. They didn't look like that anyway.”

There are also more than a few portraits of Flint, wielding a sword, with short hair and a snarl, or out in the grove, with his sunhat and basket tucked under his arm. He doesn't recognize himself in them at first, but not because Silver failed to capture his likeness. They all look just like him. He just doesn't picture himself looking the way Silver sees him.

There are also quite a few of Flint nude.

“This one is quite good,” Flint says, pointing at one where he's sleeping naked in bed. “Well, except for…”

“What?” says Silver, leaning over to look.

“Silver.”

“What?”

“ _Silver.”_

“ _What?”_ Silver leans back in his chair with a huff. “That's just how you look, to me. You _are_ that beautiful, whether or not you believe it.”

“That's very sweet of you to say,” Flint says. “But I was referring to the fact that my cock is not, in fact, long enough to reach my knees.”

“Oh.” Silver glances at the page again before shrugging. “Artistic interpretation. That's how you _feel_ to me sometimes, too, particularly if I have to ride Solomon the next day.”  

Flint rolls his eyes, but keeps flipping through the diary. He passes the portrait of the mule again, finds more front facing people that haven't been crossed out, so that his improvement even over a few days is obvious.

“How did I not know you could do this?” Flint asks in awe, running his hand over a perfect replica of the taberna’s kitchen. Surely, he hadn't been able to complete such a copy while in there, when he’d be busy cooking, so he must have been able to visualize it all in detail in his head. Long fucking memory, indeed.

“It never really came up, in between all the thievery and bloodshed,” says Silver. “And cooking.”

“You're incredibly talented,” Flint says, and makes sure to look Silver in the eye when he says it. He's not sure he's ever said anything like that to Silver before, and from the way he is speaking now, Flint thinks he might not be aware of his capacity. “Did you ever make money, doing this?”

“Drawing is no way to make a living.” Silver says it in a strange way, with a peculiar twist of the mouth, like he's quoting something someone might have said to him a long time ago.

He's about to argue, but then he turns the page and he finds he is without words.

On one page is their little house. A perfect rendition, with the thatched roof, and the sagging porch. The haphazard post they’d added to tie up Solomon, the small well, the clotheslines. It's framed by two orange trees, the branches heavy with fruit, and shadowed in the background Flint could make out further lines of the grove.

On the other page is the _Walrus_. Exactly as he saw her last, exactly as had lingered in the fading edges of his memory. It’s her, in his hands. He’d thought he’d never see her again.

“What?” Silver leans forward again to see what Flint is looking at. “Oh.” He looks at Flint and smiles. Flint has never wanted to be an artist, but if he could capture that image on paper, he'd keep it in the breast of his shirt forever.

“Our homes,” Silver says.

 

**iii,**  

They’re heading back to the house late in the evening. Silver’s up on Solomon while Flint pushes his cart, and neither of them are saying anything, but in a content way, not a dark way. The rhythmic creak of the wheels, the plod of hooves on the hard packed road, the song of crickets and cicadas in the trees and bushes lining the road -- all of it comes together until the night is just another presence on their journey home, telling them its own story.

When they reach the house, Silver ties up Solomon outside while Flint unloads his empty barrels. Beneath one, he finds a bottle that had rolled beneath some of the hay earlier that evening.

“Oh,” he says, picking it up. “I forgot about that.”

“What?”

Flint hands him the rum. “This is for you. Well, actually, it was for me, but I’m giving it to you. Well, we’re going to share it.”

Silver raises an eyebrow. “In comparison, this is by far your best attempt at giving me a gift. 

They head inside, Flint going in first. It’s dark, and he immediately goes to light the fire. Silver hovers in the open door, holding up the bottle to read the label by the lantern and the moon.

He whistles. “This is -- actually decent. Where did you get this?”

Flint struggles to get a spark lit. “About six years ago,” he says distractedly, “I was having a bad day.”

“Only one bad day?” Silver says. “That’s unusual for you.”

Flint ignores him. “I...snapped at Lua,” he admits, huffing as Silver lets out a dramatic gasp. “Shut up. At the time, I’d barely said two words to any of the people in St. Augustine. They likely would have run me out of town, but I was able to apologize and explain why it was a bad day for me.”

He can hear the thud of Silver’s approach from behind. “Why was it?”

“I actually can’t remember the real reason,” Flint says. Finally, the fire catches and Flint is able to stand, wincing at the pop in his knee joints. “But it must have been something I couldn’t share with the crowd, so I just said it was the anniversary of my wife’s death.”

It’d been perfect timing, really, because it hadn’t coincided with any real anniversary. It wasn’t the day Miranda died, or the day Thomas was taken away. It wasn’t the day he last saw Silver, or the day he died himself. It was just another day. It made it harder to remember, but he’d rather have to fake torment for a fake loss, than experience _real_ pain for a fake loss.

“So every year,” Flint goes on, “Señor Fernandez, another widower, gives me a bottle of liquor. To drink to her memory, I guess. This’ll be the first year I don’t finish it all myself.”

Silver’s smile has changed over the years. As his hands got faster when drawing a weapon, his smile grew slower now, sliding over his face like honey. The end result is always the same, though, as it is when he’s holding a gun or a blade -- it’s crooked and dangerous and so, so beautiful.

Silver holds the bottle up to Flint. “To the missus, then?”

* * *

Two hours and most of the bottle have disappeared into the night. Flint is spread out in his reading chair, legs splayed and hair down. Silver is spread out on Flint’s lap, one and a half legs thrown over the arm of the chair. His hair is also loose.

Flint is speaking, but he hasn’t a clue what he’s been saying for awhile now. It’s something like, “That fuckin’ bastard Ricardo, you know the one, the one who has about three hairs on his face and I’m including the ones in his eyebrows, the one who was acting too friendly towards Solomon last time we went to church, you know the one? _Again,_ he tries to tell me that shit gamey fuckin’ hen of his was worth a whole barrel of oranges. A whole barrel! ‘Oh, Señor,’ he says, he says, ‘This chicken will lay more eggs in a month than a single tree of yours bears fruit in a year.’ Like I can’t see this fuckin’ bird’s already been killed and fuckin’ boiled two weeks ago and that fuckin’ Ricardo’s just gone and stuck the feathers back on…”

Silver hums, pulling Flint’s shirt off his shoulder. Flint knows he isn’t listening. When one is as drunk as they are, multitasking is a challenge, and Silver looks much too focused on pouring rum into the hollow of his collarbone and licking it out.

Flint jumps a little as cold liquid drips down his chest, then groans as Silver tries to chase it with his tongue. He can’t get lower without moving, and _that_ isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Instead, he kisses back up Flint’s neck, over his chin until he reaches Flint’s mouth.

“Open up,” he says, lifting the bottle overhead.

Flint obliges. Silver pours from a height, most of the rum landing in his mouth. Silver is quick to clean up the mess, licking around Flint’s lips before kissing him again hard to chase after the taste.

They kiss for awhile, sloppily and without any clear end goal. Silver is holding Flint’s face in two hands, which likely means he’s dropped the bottle, and the remaining rum is now spilling out onto the floor. Flint doesn’t mind. He likes when Silver holds his face.

Flint slips a hand between Silver’s legs and starts gently rubbing his cock through his trousers. Silver jerks up into his hand, a high whine pushed into Flint’s grinning mouth. At the angle Silver is sitting, he can only get the faintest touch from Silver’s hip against his own cock, but he is likely too drunk for it to do much anyway. He just feels a pleasant ache shaking every inch of his body, and he wants to savor it.

Silver breaks away from the kiss, pressing his face into Flint’s rum-sticky neck. He’s thrusting slowly into Flint’s hand. He drags his mouth to Flint’s ear and whispers wetly, “What was her name?”

“Who?” Flint asks.

“Your -- _oh --_ your _wife_.”

Flint hand stills for a moment, trying to look at Silver. He’s too close for him to see anything other than his hands gripping Flint’s loose shirt, his hips steadily rising against Flint’s frozen fingers.

He starts groping Silver again, not missing the way Silver shudders against him, nails digging into Flint’s chest. Flint holds him tighter. He can feel the hot heat of Silver’s cock outlined through his pants. Silver moans loudly, before silencing himself by biting on Flint’s jaw.

Flint says, “Her name was -- Penelope, I think.”

Even drunk and aroused, Silver still finds it in him to snort. “You scholar. _Fuck_.” He gasps harshly against Flint’s cheek as Flint moves his hand faster. “Was she...what she pretty?”

“ _Beautiful,_ ” Flint says, pulling on Silver’s hair until he could get at his neck. He mouths along his throat, saying, “Long, dark, _infuriatingly_ curly hair, eyes so clear and so blue you couldn’t even begin to understand their depths until you were already drowning in them. Skin -- God, such _perfect_ skin, and a mouth made to be fucking _filled_ , with words or liquor or my _cock_ \--”

Silver kisses him again, although it’s more of a bite, really. He sucks on Flint’s bottom lip with all his teeth like he’s swallowing down a sliver of orange. Flint stops rubbing him to push open the top buttons of Silver’s trousers and finally get a hand inside. Silver’s skin is even hotter beneath the cloth, hair wet with sweat, cock slick with precum and so solid in his palm.

Silver’s thrusting with him, forehead resting against Flint’s to watch. Every time Flint’s hand twists up towards the head, Silver lets out this soft, breathy moan and they hit Flint. Every one of them, they _hit_ him, he can feel it down in his gut.

“How did she -- Christ. _Faster_ ,” Silver pants, clutching at Flint’s shoulder. “-- how did she win your heart?”

“She didn’t,” Flint says, working Silver’s cock faster as ordered, rubbing the head with his thumb. “She didn’t, she fucking _stole it_.”

Silver is close, Flint knows what Silver looks like when he’s close, but even though he’s at the edge, he still lets out a long fucking _giggle_. He’s bouncing up fast into Flint’s hand and he’s laughing and moaning so much, Flint doesn’t know how he’s breathing. “Fuck, oh, fucking _please,_ she -- she stole it right out from under you, did she?”

“Didn’t even fucking ask, she just _took_ ,” Flint agrees, leaning up to kiss him again. “Good thing I loved her, God, I _love_ you so fucking _much._ ”

Silver is closer and he even stiffens, but doesn’t come yet. All he can do is groan, “ _Stop_.”

“I love you,” Flint says anyway, kissing up his cheek, his broad nose, the soft hollow under his eyes. “I love you, I fucking _love_ you.”

Silver’s face is red and warm, and he squirms on his lap against the onslaught of words and Flint still stroking him, hard and how he likes it. “ _Stop_ , Flint, I _can’t_ , _please_ \--”

“You can,” Flint says, lips pressing against the swirls of his ear. “You can, because I _fuckin’ love you_.”

Silver cries out, his back arching towards Flint as his spills out onto his hand. Flint clutches at his back, holding him steady as his body shivers through it.

After a moment, Silver leans back in his arm. His face is still red, clutching at Flint’s shirt like something might pull him away.

He blinks at Flint for a moment, his eyes watery. He says, “What happened to the rest of the rum?”

Flint looks around uselessly. He still has a hand in Silver’s trousers. “You poured the rest out,” he says, “for the poor departed Señora Quijana.”

Silver smiles. It’s a shaky thing. “You know I -- do too. That I -- you.” He takes a deep breath. “I --”

“I know,” Flint says, rubbing his back. “I know. It’s okay.”

“ _No_.” Silver twists his hands in Flint’s shirt like he’s trying to threaten him. “I’m drunk and fucked and that means I can fucking tell you I love you like a goddamn adult.”

Flint looks up at the ceiling. It’s only partly to hide his smile. He keeps looking until Silver says, sounding harassed, “ _What?_ ”

“Oh,” says Flint, “I was just waiting for the roof to come crashing down on you.”

A pause. “Asshole.” Silver collapses forward onto him, tucking his face into Flint’s neck. “You stink, by the way.”

Flint pulls his hand away from Silver’s spent cock and wipes himself on Silver’s pants, which are already ruined. He wraps both arms around Silver. “You’re the one who decided to bathe me in rum.”

“Don’t blame the rum,” Silver mutters. Rum is an innocent party in all things.”

He sounds like he’s drifting to sleep, which has the immediate effect of making Flint’s own eyes feel heavy with exhaustion. They will really regret sleeping like this, the two of them at uncomfortable angles and covered in too many different substances to name. Flint doesn't mind. A lifetime covered in Silver wouldn't be enough for him. A night is just a tease.

He’s almost asleep when Silver shifts in his arms. He moves to Flint’s ear and whispers, “So, did you get that chicken off Ricardo?”

Flint pushes him onto the floor.

 

**iv,**

When Flint gets to the schoolhouse, several of the boys are already playing around outside. Sor Anita pretends to be stern and strict, but when the weather is particularly beautiful, she had a tendency to lie about experiencing God’s beautify firsthand, and let them eat lunch outside.

He gives each of the boys an orange, but they are too wound up from an afternoon of play to bother wasting time talking to a grownup, even one as nice as Señor Santi. He chats with Sor Anita for a few moments, and then takes his leave.

He’s a little ways down the path towards the Castillo when he sees a couple of the other boys, much further from the schoolhouse than they should be. They are staring down at the copse of trees growing in a ravine beside the path. The last rainfall had left the area marshy, like a newly formed pond, although the water was only a few inches deep.

“What are you boys doing over here?” Flint asks, stopping behind them.

They don’t look away from the trees. “We heard a noise,” Diego says, pointing down.

“It’s a baby,” says Arturo with all the authority of a 9-year old. “It sounded just like a baby.”

“No, it didn’t,” Diego says hotly. “No one in town has any babies to leave down there anyway.”

“Señora Gelez just had a baby and she looks like the kind of lady to throw a baby into a tree.”

“Sara Gelez is _three_ , that’s not a _baby_ \--”

“Quiet,” says Flint, and the boys stop talking.

Flint is listening. Faintly, he hears a soft, high cry. It doesn’t sound remotely human, though. It sounds frightened, and very, very small.

Flint sighs. “Fuck.”

“You’re not allowed to say that word,” says Diego.

“Oh?” Flint takes off his hat and his jacket, leaving them on his cart. “Which word is that?”

“Fuck,” Diego and Arturo say.

Flint surveys the ground, sloping steeply towards the trees, before slowly starting to edge his way down. The heat of the day had dried out the dirt here somewhat, and it looked rocky enough to be sturdy. He could see the check marks of bird and rodent prints in the mud though, the mud soft enough for tracks. He could still hear the faint cry.

“What are you gonna do with a baby, Señor Santi?” Arturo asks.

“It’s not a baby,” Flint says, distracted. His heel slips slightly but he splays out his hands for balance. He realizes he might have had a better shot at staying upright if he started at a run, but if moved quickly now he’ll just end up tumbling down.

“He’ll give it to Señor Juan,” says Diego. “ _Obviously_.”

_"What_ ?” Flint jerks, looking back at them. “Did he _say s--”_

Suddenly, his foot slides out further than before, further than he can stop, and he loses his balance completely. He’s still looking up at the boys, so he sees the shock as he starts to fall.

“Señor Santi!”

It’s only a few feet until he’s at the bottom of the ravine, but the angle he’d been turned had made the fall awkward, and it knocks the wind out of him. He lies there, the rainwater pooling around him warm and muddy. The grass spills upward around his face, and he thinks this must be how a corpse feels all the time. Good God, he’s _old_.

“Stay there, boys,” Flint calls, finally sitting up with a groan. “I’m fine.”

“Should I go get the Sor?”

“No, I’m _fine_ ,” he says. “Just dirty and bruised.”

“You’re bleeding,” Arturo says, sounding a little sick at the sight.

He must have scratched his head on something on the way down, because he doesn’t feel like he received a blow. It bleeds as heavily as he remembered. He brushes some of the blood away from his eye with his wrist, the only part of him not completely dirty.

“Just a cut. Don’t worry.” Flint stands, looking through the trees. The cries are certainly louder down here. “Stay with my cart. I’ll be right back.”

It takes him almost ten minutes to find the kitten. It had crawled into a hollow tree stump, likely to escape the collected rainwater. It’s fur was matted and spiked with wet, covered in leaves and dirt. Flint would have missed it entirely, had it not opened its tiny pink mouth and let out a scream just as he was walking past.

Flint kneels quietly, not wanting to spook it, but it doesn’t look like it plans to move any time soon. It’s so small, only a few weeks old at Flint’s guess. He brushes some of the leaves away, and in one fluid movement gently lifts it out of the tree.

Now that it’s been found, it no longer cries out, but only lets out these pitiful mews in Flint’s palm. Holding it, Flint is startled to notice two things. One, that it has one blue eye and one green eye, both just starting to lose the gloss and newness of infancy.

The other is that the kitten is missing a leg.

Flint checks, but there’s no sign of a wound or injury. There is just soft yet disgusting clumps of fur where its right front leg would be, like it might have just been born that way.

As he’s inspecting it, he can also feel the kitten’s entire ribcage, the fast flutter of its heart, the way it shivers in his hand. He doesn’t think the animal will live much longer, but he’s not about to abandon it, and he doesn’t have it in him anymore to just put it out of its misery.

He looks the kitten in the eye. “How the fuck are you still alive?”

The kitten looks back with that mismatched gaze and lets out a tiny scream.

Flint suddenly has the notion that God has probably held Flint in His own palm and asked that exact same question more than once.

And every time, Flint had given the exact same reply.

Miraculously, he makes it back up to the road far easier than his trip down. The kitten is patiently still against his chest. The boys are waiting anxiously by his cart.

“What are you gonna _do_ with it?” Arturo asks.

“What do you _think_ I’m going to do with it?” Flint asks. He takes his hat, turns it upside down, puts a handkerchief inside, and then softly lays the kitten down. It gives Flint a little squeak, which he interprets as a thank you, because he has been living with Silver too long, and it has driven him completely insane.

“I dunno,” says Arturo. “What good’s a cat for, anyway?”

Flint has no answer. Or rather, he has an answer, but “the way my cousin goes all soft and sweet around cats makes my dick hard” isn’t really an answer he can give to a child. Or anyone else. Ever.

They walk back to the schoolhouse together. Sor Anita looks angry at her missing students, and even angrier at Flint’s bloody face, and angrier still when Flint asks to borrow a piece of paper, some ink, and Diego for the rest of the afternoon.

“Oh, and some of that fish,” he says, seeing the bones on her desk, “if you’re finished with your lunch.”

He’s leaning over with the quill when it occurs to him that the last time he wrote Silver a letter had been when Flint had faked his death, and had wanted Silver to find him again. It shakes him a little, remembering how he felt when he wrote it, altogether desperate and exuberant and so afraid he was giddy with it. And six years later, here he is, writing to Silver again, and he can feel every difference between then and now in the grooves of his teeth, in the dirt beneath his nails. He tries not to contemplate too often how much his life has changed over the years, because each time it is so incredibly staggering.

He doesn’t really know what to put in the note. It’s just a _note_ , for God’s sake, and everyone is watching him tremble before a single piece of paper to his fucking _cousin_ . So he writes: _“Found cat, but it might die. Taking care of it, no need to worry or rush home.”_ He’s not sure how to sign it, so he scribbles something that might be an S or an F, depending on how one looked at it.

He gives it to Diego, and instructs him to first go to the Castillo and deliver to the two on-duty guards their oranges, and stress to them that Santiago is _fine_ , he just fell and cut his forehead a bit and had to go home and change. And then he tells Diego to go to the taberna with his sister for dinner like always and calmly hand Silver the note. He emphasizes these points to Diego. Everyone needs to understand that Flint is _fine._

Diego takes his duty seriously, listening with solemn sincerity, but Flint knows he is giddy at the prospect of going to the fort, as he knows the rest of the boys are seething with envy. He folds the note and sticks it in his jacket, and then actually salutes Flint, with an orange still gripped in his hand.

Sor Anita rolls her eyes, but gives Flint a new handkerchief to dab at his cut as he makes his way home.

Along the way, he stops to try and feed the kitten. If he waits until he gets to the house, the other cats would swarm in, and besides it might not live long enough for the whole trek home. Flint contents himself with the fact that his hat is going to smell of fish for awhile as he lays down some of the smaller pieces.

The kitten goes from dozing to alert in seconds with a twitch of its pink nose. There’s no other word for it, it fucking _devours_ the fish, eating so heartily that Flint is no longer worried about moving the cart back to the house while it eats. It makes these loud, grumbling noises as it chews on the fish, louder than the cries the boys had originally heard. By the time he reaches the house, the fish is all gone, and the kitten is chewing on the bones.

“You’re a fucking trickster,” Flint tells it, heading behind the house to the well. It had started to bat the fish bones around the bottom of his cart, oblivious. “You pretend like you have no idea what you’re doing, like you’re this tiny little shit no one gives a damn about, when really, you’re a _giant_ little shit that gets away with everything.”

The kitten blinks at him once before going back to playing with the fishbones.

Since it doesn’t look likely to die anytime soon now, Flint takes a bucket from the well to clean himself up first. He removes his dirty shirt and tries his best to remove all the mud that’s caked to his neck and hands. As he suspected, the cut on his temple is small, but those kinds of head wounds tend to bleed the most, and so it takes a few wipes with the handkerchief Sor Anita gave him before it stops coming away pink.

He gets a fresh bucket of water and brings it over to the kitten. It is still in the cart, yelling because it can’t figure out how to get out. He gets one hand under its now fuller belly and sits down in the grass. Then he picks up a damp cloth and gets to work.

The kitten is not, by any means, appreciative, screaming and squirming to get away from the cold water. But Flint is relentless, rubbing away at the dirt like his life depends on it. He has to get up a couple times to get fresh water, and the kitten tries to make a break for it each time, but it can never get far enough. Flint has to admit the little hop it makes on its one front leg is painfully familiar.

The sun moves further west, and he’s finally discovering that the kitten is actually _white_ under all that mud and filth _,_ when he hears a gallop of a horse growing louder and louder towards the house. Flint stops rubbing and holds the wet kitten in his hand, mindless of all the wriggling, and doesn’t stand up to greet Silver as he races around the back of the house on Solomon.

Silver looks absolutely _wild,_ pulling Solomon to a sharp, sudden stop. His hair all over the place, his eyes burning and livid, and in his hand he’s wielding -- a fucking _meat cleaver._

“Please tell me you didn’t ride through town holding that,” Flint asks.

The snarl on Silver’s face drops instantly, the fight leaving him at once as he looks down at Flint, mouth agape. “What --”

“Honestly,” says Flint, gesturing with the kitten. “I wrote you a _note_.”

Silver stares for a moment longer before his lips form a thin, angry line. He dismounts Solomon, who looks wiped out by sprint back to the grove. Silver storms over, and silently thrusts Flint the note he’d given to Diego.

Flint reads it.

So -- okay. The paper had gotten quite a bit dirty in his handling of it. And a few drops of blood seem to have fallen from his forehead as he’d written that he _probably_ should have noticed. But it’s not his fault the ink hadn’t completely dried before giving it to Diego, so that now it more or less read, “ _Found ca--- ---might die. Take care--- it -- worry --- rush home._ ”

“Oh,” says Flint.

Silver hums in agreement, still gripping the knife.

“Didn’t Diego explain what happened?”

“Diego,” says Silver, “isn’t allowed in the kitchens. Lua gave it to me without any kind of explanation whatsoever.”

“And you just rode out of there, also with no explanation whatsoever.” Flint sighs. “One of us will have to go back and explain, so she doesn’t end up coming over here.”

“Yes,” says Silver, “ _one_ of us will have to.” He sits down in the grass next to him with a loud exhale, sticking the meat cleaver in the dirt. “Who the fuck is this?”

Flint shrugs. “Some boys found it. I was going to give it to you once I made sure it wouldn’t, you know, die.”

The kitten, aware now that they were speaking about it, leaps out of Flint’s hand and lands between them. It hops over to Silver, and starts sniffing his knife. 

“You got me a fucking one-legged cat,” Silver says drily, prodding it away from the blade.

“Technically, it has two more legs than you do.” Flint drops the wet rag he’s still holding in the bucket of dirty water with a sad plop. “I didn’t plan it, I just _found_ it. If you don’t want it --”

“Shut the fuck up.” He lifts up the kitten and holds it in front of his face. The kitten squeaks at him, pawing at Silver’s nose with its one front paw. Silver’s eyes go all soft and sweet, and Flint resolves to rush to Lua’s as soon as humanly possible, so he can rush back to be here all night.

“It’s got our eyes,” Silver says.

Flint huffs. “You’re going to have to give it a real name this time, since I think you’ve given out all the ones of people we knew.”

Silver contemplates this, toying with the pink pads of the kitten’s paw. It starts to gnaw on Silver’s finger, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“She looks like a Don Pablos to me, don’t you think?” Silver says.

“Fuck you,” says Flint. “She does _not_.”

“Come on, little Lord,” Silver says, somehow managing to stand up on his crutch with the kitten still in hand. “You still need more food, even if you are the model of hobos, and _he_ needs to put a shirt on so he can head into town, so he can hurry back, so I can fuck him into the floor for scaring the shit out of me.”

Silver slings Don Pablos on top his shoulder, so he can grab Flint by the hair and kiss him gently on the fresh cut on his forehead. Flint thinks of all the other cuts, bruises, scrapes, stings, burns, and wounds he’s endured in his lifetime, every one that scarred him, either in his memory or in his skin, that were never treated softly afterwards by anyone. But the ones that Silver kissed, from the split at his temple to the nick on his finger -- those are the ones that will never leave him.

Solomon is still exhausted from his earlier ride, but it looks like he’ll be running a couple more times tonight.

 

**v,**

It’s a few weeks since Don Pablos turned up, and Silver is still trying to fuck Flint into the floor.

Or, at the very least, the mattress. The sun had set hours ago, and the candle flames dance in the breeze from the open window. The buzz of nightlife outside is muffled beneath the harsh pants of Silver in his ear.

Silver’s hips slow to a stop, his arms wrapped tightly around Flint’s waist. Flint can’t help but whine, gripping the bed with both hands as he pushes back into Silver. He’d been right on the edge, Silver thick and hot inside him, hitting that perfect spot with just enough measured force to make Flint forget every one of his names. Silver breathes heavily into the back of Flint’s neck, shifting slightly, but not really fucking back in.

“Come on, old man,” Flint moans, squeezing tight around Silver. “Goddamn it, Silver, _fuck me_.”

Silver groans, adjusting his leg against Flint’s. “My back,” he mutters, leaning up and away from Flint. “Bothering me today. This position is -- beginning to hurt.”

Flint sighs, lowering his head to the bed. “This was _your_ idea.”

“It was not!”

“Your exact words!” Flint glares at him over his shoulder. “I believe it was something like, ‘If you keep looking at me like that, Captain, I’m gonna have to bend you in half tonight and fuck you until you can taste me on your tongue.”

“You were supposed to be _asleep_ ,” Silver complains, tugging hard on Flint's untamed hair, cutting off Flint’s response entirely. “I can’t be held responsible for the things I say when you’re supposed to be sleeping. And my back didn’t...hurt then.”

The way Silver walks with the crutch forces his body to move constantly at odd, crooked angles, causing strain to his leg or his spine. The time he rides on Solomon alleviates it some, but then the movement on top of the mule can also exacerbate it, if it’s already starting to twinge. Silver rarely, if ever, talks about his chronic pain, but Flint can often see it in the lines around his eyes and mouth. But those lines are always there, even when he sleeps, and Flint knows better than to ask if he’s alright. So Flint also knows if it hurts enough for Silver to _say_ it hurts, that it must hurt really bad.

They breathe together, thinking. Flint’s cock is still just as hard, and he can’t feel that Silver has softened enough to change their plans altogether, but it seems adjustments have to be made. They must have reached the same conclusion, because Silver grabs his hips at the same time that Flint grabs his ass, and they roll together without a word, until Silver’s on his back diagonally across the bed, with Flint splayed out on top of him.

Flint lets out a long moan, overcome with the sudden change. He’d had Silver’s cock in him the whole time, but now he has the weight of his own body pushing down on it, and he feels so stretched and open and fucking _good_. He rocks a little, planting his feet outside Silver’s thighs for leverage.

Silver shifts again, just slightly, so he can nip at the hinge of Flint’s jaw. “God,” he murmurs into Flint’s ear, “God, _Christ_ , you feel so fucking good on top of me.”

Flint hums, then gasps as Silver’s hands roam up and down his chest, tweaking at his nipples, running his nails outside his naval. He reaches up to clutch at Silver’s hair, feeling untethered. His whole body is opened and exposed to the night through the open window, and he’s desperate for something to cling to.

He turns to kiss Silver, and into his mouth he asks, “Feel better?”

“ _Yes_ , darling,” Silver groans, his hips rising up in short bursts, “ _yes_.”

Silver keeps kissing him, but Flint is too overwhelmed to do anything but leave his mouth open for Silver to fuck with his tongue. Flint rotates his hips in perfect concentric circles, grinding himself down on Silver’s cock. He doesn’t lift up even when Silver keeps trying to thrust himself further inside, content to stay full.

Flint’s rhythm is thrown off when Silver finally stops stroking his heaving stomach to grab his cock, and he moans high into Silver’s mouth. He pulls on Flint with even strokes, using the force of his own hips to push Flint up into his tight fist. Flint breaks away from Silver’s breath, gasping for air as he rides Silver’s cock. The wet slaps of their bodies colliding sound just like the ocean waves Flint dreams about, and the whole room burns as the candlelight flashes against the sweat in his eyes.

“That’s it, darling,” Silver whispers, teeth and lips scraping the curves of Flint’s ear. “You feel so perfect, your feel so -- fuck, fucking -- _wonderful._ Can you taste me yet, Captain? I promised you’d be able to taste me.” He tugs Flint’s head by his messy hair to the side hard so he can reach Flint’s lips again, licks the corner of his mouth and then bites down. “I promised, _shit_ , I fucking prom--” He chokes off with a groan as he Flint squeezes around him again and he comes, fully embedded inside Flint.

“Yes, _yes,”_ Flint moans, bringing his hand down to join Silver’s, who never paused in stroking Flint’s cock even as he came himself, because even though Flint is the Captain of nothing these days, he’s still the Captain of Silver, and Silver would never let him down. “ _Yes_ , Silver, I taste you, I can --   _always_ fucking _taste you_.”

Flint comes, and even though he’s been riding close to the edge of it for awhile, it still surprises him. He’d been momentarily focused on chasing after Silver’s tongue, and so only realizes it when his back is bowing off of Silver’s chest, come landing on his twitching stomach. Silver’s arm wraps itself around Flint again, keeping him steady while he rides the aftershocks. Keeping him steady still, even as he collapses back down on top of him.

Silver’s breathing heavily in his ear again, and if that was the only sound Flint heard for the rest of his life, it would be enough. Until Silver murmurs, “Always?”

It takes Flint a few seconds to remember what he’s referring to, and he gazes into Silver’s eyes, trying to figure out how best to explain it. His whole life, he’s tried to pretend he wasn’t a romantic. He desperately wanted to be pragmatic, and pessimistic, and cynical -- even when things had been good, and all his fears had been hypothetical. But here with Silver, where he’s allowed to just _be_ , where he’s allowed to just stay in his orange grove and _think_ about Silver, about the jut of his knuckles, about the pointed teeth only visible when he laughs, about the way he smells like spice all the time, about the way he _looks_ back at Flint -- here he can be, without wanting to be anything else. Flint has never asked for permission to do anything before, but the knowledge that if he _were_ to ask, Silver would grant him any freedom, is more than Flint knows what to do with.

“Your sweat is mine,” he says instead. “Your blood is mine, your come, your tears, your saliva --” Flint kisses him softly “-- is mine. You’ll always be on my tongue now. My body is changed forever, thanks to you. It’ll only ever be you I taste.”

Silver closes his eyes, rests his forehead against Flint’s, and they stay like that for awhile, until Silver starts to shift beneath him. 

“That may be true,” he says quietly, “but my lungs are still mine, and I sort of need to breathe, so…”

Flint huffs a laugh and slowly gets up, letting Silver’s cock slip from him with only a small pang of regret. He gets all the way off the bed, stands and stretches, knowing Silver is looking at him do it. He makes his way to the window, idly opening the bedroom door as he passes.

Don Pablos bounds into the room, clearly annoyed at being shut out. All the other cats use the night to hunt, but she is by no means a hunter. Still, somehow, she has charmed all the other feral creatures on the property, and so Flint will often find dead birds and mice left on the porch, which Don Pablos will immediately attack for breakfast.

Flint reaches out the window for the bucket of clean water he left there. He cleans himself up while watching Silver torment Don Pablos with the bedsheet. She might only have the one front paw, but she’s furious with the back feet, taking down Silver’s covered hand with her teeth and kicking it mercilessly until he stops wriggling it.

“I got you another gift,” Flint says, wiping down his stomach.

Silver looks up from where Don Pablos is attempting to eat his hand. “You what?”

“I got it impulsively, when I went to pick up some candles this afternoon,” Flint says, tossing the wet rag for Silver to use. Don Pablos attempts to catch it mid-air and just succeeds in getting flattened by it.

“This has to stop,” says Silver incredulously. “You’re going to sprain yourself, being this generous.”

Flint smiles, heading over to the bag he left near the door. “I got some funny looks buying it, even after I said it was for Solomon. Actually, that might have caused some even funnier looks.”

He holds out the hairbrush to Silver. It’s frame is a heavy, ornate metal, only somewhat tarnished, and the bristles are thick and course. Flint doesn’t know what made him buy it, exactly, only that he picked it up just to hold it and couldn’t be compelled to put it down.

Silver frowns. “You bought Solomon a hairbrush?”

“I bought _you_ a hairbrush,” Flint says, approaching the bed.

“Oh.” Silver smiles, and it’s a little sad. “I’m sorry, Flint. I _do_ appreciate it, but my hair is not made to be brushed. Unless it’s wet, one stroke with that and --” He makes a sound like an explosion.

Flint smiles, too. “Can you sit up?”

Silver, with a curious expression, shifts up the bed, Don Pablos stalking him as he goes, until he’s resting against the carved headboard.

“Open your legs.”

“Ah.” Silver frowns again, but nervously does as he’s told. “While that’s -- ah, an interesting idea, I think I’d rather just have your cock in me.”

Flint rolls his eyes. He flips the brush in his hand so that the handle is facing Silver. Tentatively, he takes it, leaving Flint free to crawl between his open legs. He sits with his back to Silver, giving him wide access to the tangled, sweaty auburn hair curling around his ears.

Don Pablos approaches Flint warily, remembering still how relentlessly Flint had washed her that day. She sniffs his toes cautiously, and squeaks when Flint grabs her by the scruff and starts petting her.

Silver hasn’t moved yet, but then Flint finally hears him snort softly, and then he feels the brush start to make its way through his hair.

“Thank you,” Silver says quietly. “It’s perfect.”

Silver’s gentler than Flint thought he would be, working through the small knots that form at the ends. He follows each brush with a stroke of his hand, then again with his fingers dragging through, then again with the brush. He makes sure every strand is neat and smooth, before moving on to the next piece.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silver falls madly in love with Lua’s bathtub the moment he lays eyes on it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by [this beautiful art by johix](http://johix.tumblr.com/post/163028835025/sooo-ive-read-this-amazing-silverflint-fanfic) which in turn was inspired by my fic, it's the ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiife
> 
> also for elle's tumblr prompt: 56. “It brings out your eyes.” - silverflint (orange verse?!)
> 
> also for allie's request that i find a way to include my lua headcanon
> 
> there's a bunch happening here and all it is, is silver talking

* * *

 

Silver falls madly in love with Lua’s bathtub the moment he lays eyes on it.

Which is a good thing, since he’s already paid for it. Lua had no need for it any longer and had been trying to sell it, she’d said, for ages. Silver told her the small tub at the house made it hard for him to really stretch out his aching body, and if anything, only served to stiffen up his joints and bones. He told himself it isn’t that his maneuvering skills have softened from lack of use, but that Lua is an exceptionally tough person to manipulate, which is why he still ended up having to pay part of what she was asking for it.

Two of her regulars, Francisco and Jorge, haul it over early Sunday morning. They drop it off beneath some trees in the grove, not too far from the well.

Silver loves it. The wood is discolored and splintered, with more plugs than a typical tub has, but it’s large and it’s _his_. Even the tiny, slouching step to get inside is his. He loves it.

Flint helps him fill it up, which takes the better part of the morning. The water is clear and cold, and the day is hot and muggy. Silver wastes no time stripping down and throwing himself in. In truth, it’s not much bigger than the other tub, but when he sits he can stretch his leg all the way out, and by bending his knee, he can lie down at the bottom of it. He submerges. There’s just soundless bubbles beneath the surface, the feel of his hair haloing his head, his legs automatically trying to float upwards. It’s been a long time since his legs have felt anything but _heavy_. He lets them rise.

Eventually, he comes up for air, but once he’s got another lungful, he goes back down, leaving just his eyes out, like an alligator. It’s fitting; this morning, he feels as slow and changeless as a reptile. He hates the sea, because it’s dark and cruel the way a mirror is. But shallow waters such as these, with no currents, and no storms, and no surprises -- these, he is fine with. If he had his way, every body of water would be a pond or a puddle. He can relax here.

Until he sees Flint stripping down next to the tub. It's just a vision of white and red, like a battlefield in an orange grove.

Silver sits up. “What are you doing?”

Flint pauses in undoing his trousers. “Having a bath?”

“In here?”

“No, Silver, in the big hole at the edge of the grove.” Flint removes his pants, which is his usual tactic for ending fights before they even began. “ _Yes_ , in the bathtub.”

But Silver may love Flint, but he _loves_ his great big tub, so he says, “Can’t you wait until after I’m finished?”

“So, my options are either to clean myself in your dirty water,” says Flint, climbing the step, “or empty it and refill it _again_ for another three hours? Shove over. I thought this was why you wanted a bigger tub, anyway.”

Silver shoves over. Flint slides in next to him. With the extra person, the water sloshes a bit over the edge. It’s still long enough that, when sitting up, Silver’s toes can’t reach the other side, but he’d been planning to starfish on the bottom of this thing from the moment he’d seen it, and now that seems unlikely.

“I told you why,” Silver says. He has nowhere to put his arm except behind Flint’s shoulders. “The smaller tub was starting to strain my back. It’s too hard to stretch.”

“Oh.” Flint thinks about it, then takes Silver’s left leg and extends it over his right, so the end of his leg brushes right against Flint’s knee. “I thought that was a lie.”

Silver tries not to twitch. He knows he fails when he sees Flint glance at him out the corner of his eye. He drags his fingers listlessly through the water, and works hard to not sound like anything at all when he asks, “You still think I lie about everything, then?”

“No,” says Flint immediately. “Only when addressing the public, about something I automatically assumed was sexual in nature.”

Silver looks at him. The heat in Flint’s smile would be enough to make the cold water steam. His hand trails up the inside of Silver’s thigh, idly, like a man looking for something he knows he’s already found. 

It’s almost enough to make Silver forget Flint invading in his private tub time. “I came in here to _stretch_ _,_ ” he says.

Flint shrugs and settles back against Silver’s arm. “Fine.” He doesn’t remove his hand. “So stretch.”

 

* * *

 

Shortly after, Silver says, “Alright, fine. I guess you can kiss me a little bit.”

“Only if you wash my back first,” says Flint.

Silver’s manipulation skills may have turned to shit, but he still knows a good deal when he’s offered one.

 

* * *

 

“Why did Lua have a tub this big, anyway?” Flint asks later.

Enough time has passed since they both came for that question not to feel inappropriate. The heat in the air and the coolness of the water drains them of any urgency, so after Flint gets his back washed, and Silver gets his hair washed, Silver crawls into his lap and they just kissed for awhile. Silver has catalogued every motion he could possibly make with his tongue, that will cause Flint to let out those soft hitches and surprised moans that slip from Flint’s mouth into Silver’s like all of their old bad ideas. He sees no reason not to use them all now. One of his favorite things about Flint is his inability to keep his hands _still_ , no matter what he is doing, but especially when Silver is over him. There’s no where they can’t reach, so they go everywhere, behind Silver’s neck, rubbing his hipbones, following the lines of his ribs. His fingers even slide in between their kiss, because it’s apparently not enough for Flint to taste his lips. He has to feel them too, the swollen flush of them, the rough drag of his tongue over the swirl of Flint’s fingertips, quickly followed by the sharp bite of teeth. Eventually, they’re both fully hard, but even that is unrushed. They’re hips move as lazily as the minutes around them. When they do finally come, they’re holding onto each other, gripping in all the places that matter, foreheads pressed together to watch. While neither one will ever admit it, or know that there’s even something to admit, it’s a sight they’ll never tire of.

But then Silver moves off of him, needing to stretch out again, and time passes the way it always seems to do. Silver’s soap is down to a sliver thinner than his finger, and the water is well and truly dirty now. Their skin is wrinkled and pale, but neither say anything about getting out. Flint just asks about Lua.

“I imagine it’s easier bathing nine children in a tub this size,” Silver says, stretching low again at the bottom of the tub. The edge of the water tickles his chin. The position hurts his neck, but not his back or his legs, so that’s fine.

“ _Nine_?”

Silver has to crane up to look at him, which hurts as well, but he needs his incredulity to be seen. “You really made an effort before, to know nothing about the people around you, didn’t you?”

“Only you,” Flint says, with the kind of honesty he only gets after kissing Silver for awhile. “And anyway, it….never came up. So why don’t you tell me, Mister People-Person.”

“So you know nothing about Nicolás, her husband?”

Flint pauses. “I know he's not around anymore.”

Suddenly, an orange tabby head pops up over by the step.  It places both front paws on the edge and sniffs the air hard, trying to determine if anything in the tub is edible. Silver shifts up, and sees a majority of their cats have migrated to the area, lying around like they’ve been shaken from one of the trees. Silver hopes Flint doesn't realize they’d likely been there earlier, when all the kissing had been going on.

Silver leans against Flint, stretching his leg over Flint’s again. “They were sweethearts since childhood. She told me they’d been neighbors, from well-off families. His father had practiced law, and hers had been a landowner, outside of Sevilla. Their marriage had been arranged before she’d even been born, but that worked out well, since she apparently declared him to be hers forever at the tender age of four.

“They married when she was seventeen. He was….twenty, I believe. She _claims_ she got pregnant with her first child the next day. But it became apparent, or perhaps it had been before their marriage, I’m not certain, that Nico, as she called him, was the absolute worst worker to ever live.”

Flint snorts. “That sounds familiar.”

“I beg your pardon,” Silver says, frowning. “I am the _most_ fucking industrious.”

Flint thumbs at Silver’s pout. “When it suits you,” he says. 

“Well, why the fuck _else_ would I work?”

For some reason, that just makes Flint grin. Flint’s grin is like a revolution. It always starts in one corner, small and passionately defiant, until he either quells it into submission or lets it rise up and overcome. Every one of his smiles is a rebellion, an insurrection, the start of a new and better era. Silver never loves him more than when he’s being nonconforming.

“Nico couldn't hold a job,” Silver continues. “Not even the ones his father or father-in-law acquired for him. He tried, Lua insisted, but he had no interest in law, or farming, or business. Nico’s love was music. He had a beautiful singing voice, and his hands moved over the strings of a guitar better than -- uh. He just… played very well.” When Lua had told him this story, she’d had a few glasses of wine in the middle of the afternoon, solemn by the window in the kitchen, and she’d been incredibly, aggressively descriptive about how _well_ Nico’s fingers moved until Silver had plead for her to stop.

“That well, huh?” says Flint, because he can likely guess, but he wasn't _there_ so he doesn't understand the _trauma_.

“Their parents grew tired of his inability to provide,” Silver continues quickly, “so they gave them some money and told them to seek their own way in the New World. But Nico had no interest in working on this side of the Atlantic either. He’d purchased a fishing boat, but that was just a good opportunity for him to lie on the water and come up with new songs. He never caught anything on bad days. On good days, Lua said, he’d catch a single fish.”

The orange tabby suddenly leaps onto the edge of the tub. It pauses, balancing precariously on the thin side for a moment before taking a hesitant step forward.

Silver says, “How much do you want to bet --”

“No.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It if falls in, it falls in with _us_ , and our naked genitals, and its sharp claws,” says Flint. “ _No._ ”

Silver sighs, leaning forward to knock the cat off, but it jumps out of his reach back onto the grass anyway. It is immediately leapt upon by a small, angry mass of white.

“Why, good afternoon, Don Pablos,” Silver says, folding his arms over the side of the tub. “You’re looking exceptionally vicious today.” Which she does. She’s got her only front paw wrapped around the orange cat’s neck, to easily kick it in the head with both back legs.

“That cat is the Antichrist.” Flint says that everyday, and each time he gets a little less scathing. He pulls on Silver’s elbow until he falls back into him. “Keep telling me the story,” he says. “I want to know the end.”

“You already knows how it ends,” Silver says.

“I still want to hear you tell it,” Flint says.

Silver twists to kiss Flint’s cheek, each soft prickle of hair stabbing at his lips like sunlight. When he finds it in himself to stop, he says, “Well, you know Lua. She’s Lua. She can only take so much of this nonsense, even if she did love the man. So she takes the rest of their savings and buys the tavern. But it’s a slow start, because he still goes out on the boat, and by this point she has three children, and they are new in town and starting a business, I’m told, is one of the hardest things a person can do. But Lua is --”

“Lua,” Flint finishes.

“Exactly,” says Silver. “Nico would come home with a single fresh fish and an, _‘Oh, Lua mi amor, I saw a cloud today that resembled your curves in all their glory, and this song sprung from the well of my heart._ ’”

“What the hell,” Flint interrupts, “was that?”

“What?”

“That accent,” Flint says. “What _was_ that?”

Silver shrugs. “That’s how he sounds. What?”

“Lua would have killed any man that sounded like that,” Flint insists. “No matter how much she loved him.”

“That’s how he sounds in my _head_.”

“Then your head is deranged,” Flint says.

“Well, we knew that,” Silver says. He says it more seriously than he means, so Flint will stop teasing him and press a long, lingering kiss in his hair instead. “Can I continue?”

“In your own voice, please,” he says.

“So -- where the fuck was I?”

“Lua was Lua.”

“Right,” says Silver, shifting. Flint’s hand is trapped behind his back and it’s hurting his neck. He tugs it out and lets it hang over his shoulder, and well, if his fingers are right there, he might as well play with them. “Lua was Lua. She never told me how she got the idea. But one day, she puts a dartboard up in the taberna, and declares Nico’s sole catch of the day to be a Lucky Fish. Whoever wins the game of darts will get to eat the fish for free, cooked however they wanted it.”

He traces the wrinkles in Flint’s wet hands, the razor thin cuts from the orange trees, the semi-permanent callus from holding a gun for a decade, only now starting to fade. He says, “A couple games between some regulars turned into a daily tournament. Everyone wanted to win. Everyone _did_ win, according to Lua. The longest streak only lasted a week, somewhere around her fifth pregnancy. Men, women, children -- anyone was allowed to compete, and anyone could win. Apparently, Nico had suggested he could throw in a song for each of the winners, too. Dinner and a song, what could be better? But Lua vetoed that idea. She said his songs were for _her_ only. She says she has every song of his memorized, but will never sing them. She says she doesn’t have a voice to sing.”

There are birds singing right now, high in the trees overhead. Silver is hungry, and he’s thinking he could probably reach up and grab some oranges to eat, but maybe, just maybe, if he stays here in this cold water, side pressed against Flint’s warm chest -- maybe if he stays here long enough, some of the oranges will fall down to him.

“So what happened to him?” Flint asks softly.

Silver shrugs again. He’s just grasping Flint’s index finger, like his own hand is a gun for Flint to aim. “He caught a bad fever,” Silver says. “Was never able to get over it. Lily, the youngest, was about eight at the time. Lua took down the dartboard, ended the contests, but by then, the business was doing fine and she didn’t need to draw anymore customers in. For a little while after, suitors would attempt to court her, but they were always sent the same way. She said she got more love than most people ever got in their life, and she wasn’t greedy. And she’s been running the place alone ever since.”

It seems to Silver like Flint isn’t breathing behind him, but he is. He always is. Every morning, Silver quietly checks while Flint is still asleep. It’s not like he has a fear of Flint dying in his sleep. It’s not like he’s so paranoid that he thinks it’s just going to happen suddenly, randomly, with no way Silver could prepare or fight back. It’s not like he thinks Flint is going to die at all. Watching Flint breathe is something Silver does for himself. He works hard to catch the rhythm, to make sure they spend their days always on the same beat.

He knows Flint is thinking about Lua, about her loss, about her sacrifice. About how tough and immovable she always seems, because she always _is._ She continues, the way time always does, the way people are supposed to do. She continues.

All Flint says is, “Women are so much stronger than men.”

Silver sighs silently with relief, and agrees. He’d been afraid Flint would try to make him promise to do the same, to continue, if he ends up dying before Silver does. He’d been afraid Flint would insist, would not let it go, and Silver has promised himself he would never lie to Flint again.

 

* * *

 

Silver wakes up the same way he fell asleep: with sudden, unexpected swiftness. The birds are singing a different song, an afternoon song. The sun had shifted in the sky, and the cats had at some point moved to find warmer places to sleep out of the new patches of shadow. He had his arm around Flint’s shoulder, causing Flint to slump into his neck as he sleeps on.

Every time Silver falls asleep, it feels like an accident. He hates the feeling. It's like standing on a shuddering ship, the waves beating on the sides, and even though the anchor is up, the ship doesn't go anywhere. Beneath his feet, he feels the trapped energy of motion shivering up into his heart. He needs to move forward, but he’s stuck.

Flint sleeps like a degenerate gambler. He does it often, uncaring of the risks inherent. He bets recklessly, and some nights are dreamless, and some nights are good dreams, and yet some nights are bad dreams. Every night, Flint sleeps and accepts the cards he’s dealt.

Gambling has never been Silver’s vice.

His stomach rumbles. His arm is dead and numb where Flint is lying on it. Sweat itches in his hair. His body aches like a rotting tooth. He finds himself close enough to see the freckles on Flint’s eyelids.

He says, quietly, so no one will hear, “God must have made you out of rain.”

Flint says nothing. Every one of his slow exhales shifts the hairs on Silver’s chest.

“I know you think you’re made for the sea,” Silver continues, tracing the freckles on his shoulder, “and you’re wonderful out there, of course. But that is your skill only. It is learned. I think the water in you _must_ be rain. It must be used to help things grow.”

He feels a sharp tug on his hair, and he’s able to crane his head back just far enough to see Don Pablos fighting it where it dangles over the edge of the tub. She blinks up at him with that mismatched gaze, claws stuck in his curls, until he shakes his head a little and she starts to chew aggressively to make him stop. Then a bird lands nearby and she goes to stalk it instead.

He looks back down at Flint. A perfect patch of sunlight lands right in the dip of his neck, shining with sweat, rising and falling with each coveted breath. He says, “You belong in the grass. Among the trees and the moss. The sea only ever paled your eyes and roughened your skin. The green here brings out your eyes, the muscles in your body like the valley I want to lie forever in, beneath all your hills. I never see you at sea anymore. I only ever see you with tall grass scratching your ankles and vines around your waist and your face hidden beneath the leaves. There isn’t a drop of blue left in you.”

“If you keep talking to me like that,” Flint mutters, eyes still closed, “You’re going to make the infamous Captain James Flint blush.”

Instead, it’s Long John Silver who flushes. “You promised you’d stop listening to me when I talked to you in your sleep.”

Flint’s eyes flutter open. They’re as soft and sleepy as a meadow. “That does sound like the kind of thing I’d promise.” He shifts up so he’s not leaning on Silver anymore. Before kissing him, he says, “As God is my witness, John Silver -- I will never listen to you again.”

The kiss is almost enough to relieve his embarrassment. “Go grab me an orange,” he grumbles against Flint’s mouth.

“Or what?” Flint smiles dangerously. “You’ll recite more poetry?”

“It wasn't _poetry,”_ Silver insists, pushing him away. “It was a _threat._ I was saying I’m going to put you in the _ground.”_

“Uh huh.” Flint unfolds himself and stands. He doesn't have a body that looks like it should move gracefully, but it does. It's a body that has hardened with work, that has softened with age, and yet it keeps working. Silver is eye-level with his thighs, could almost feel the freckles textured like sand beneath his teeth as he looks at them. Flint stretches overhead to grab some oranges. He nearly topples over in the effort, arching on his toes. Silver grabs his knees to keep him steady.

“Tell me another story,” Flint says, sitting back against Silver’s side and handing him an orange. “I don't want to fall asleep again.”

Silver tsks. “Already you're breaking your oath to God,” he says. “I am shocked. _Shocked._ ”

“I didn't say I’d listen,” says Flint, nails digging into his own orange. “I just said you should tell it.”

Silver raises an eyebrow. “Next item?” He stomps his foot twice on the bottom of the tub, the movement clumsy underwater.

He’d meant it as a joke, but Flint just stares at him blankly. Or, not blankly. _Glassy-eyed_ , mouth open in a harsh inhale. Silver’s about to ask if he’d taken ill all of a sudden, when he finds himself with a lap-full of violent orange farmer.

Flint’s hands bury themselves in Silver’s hair as he bites and sucks on Silver’s tongue. He grinds his heavy, half-hard cock into Silver’s stomach, moaning like he's been on edge for hours (or, perhaps, years) instead of seconds.

Silver holds on, breathing hard through his nose like he’s trying to catch up in a foot race. He feels like his mind’s been left behind several paces, and he’s not entirely sure what's happening. So he let’s Flint take him where he needs to go, knowing he’ll get there eventually. They get messy for awhile.

“I’m sorry,” Flint pants later, sliding off Silver’s lap. “I don't know where that came from.”

“Oh, I know _exactly_ where that came from,” says Silver, now finally able to think. He grabs their oranges, which had floated away.  “Repression is a hell of a thing. Maybe later you could tie this hair back, find you a long black coat. I can pretend to have two legs, and you can have me over your knee for not cooking a pig right.”

Flint scowls, even as his eyes go a bit dazed. “I was never repressed. I was -- preoccupied then. And I didn't trust you.”

“Trust has nothing to do with what I would have had you do to me.” Silver smirks, but he doesn't completely mean it. If it had happened back then, it would have been lustful, meaningless, liable to grow cold with each day. The man he’d been would have deserved everything Flint could have done to him and been better off for it, but the man he’d been would have probably attempted to kill Flint if he’d tried to discipline him. Even though he can now barely wrap his mind around the fact that there had ever been a time he hadn't been allowed to be this close to Flint, he hadn't been allowed to touch whenever he needed to, he thinks it's better it turned out this way. Each touch, now, has meaning -- a _good_ meaning, and he’d never sacrifice that now.

Captain Flint in his long coat had been something he used to daydream about constantly. It still featured, but it had quickly been surpassed by Flint in a long white night shirt, in a straw sunhat, in his bare feet.

“Did I tell you what happened to me the other day?” Silver asks, settling his arm around Flint’s back again. He can't peel his orange like this, but that's why God invented teeth. “When we had that dreadful afternoon thunderstorm?”

“No.” Flint snatches the orange before Silver can start tearing into it. “But I’m sure you were having a nicer time than me.”

The rain had come in sideways, the winds were blowing so hard, and lightning and thunder had  layered each other like lies shared by too many people. Flint had gotten trapped at the schoolhouse, and he hadn't told Silver exactly what occurred, but he'd only said, with a haunted look in his eye, that he knew now that little boys are _bastards_. Silver had always gotten the impression Flint had had a very solitary childhood. He must have only found peers in adulthood, which is why they are so valued in his eyes. Silver’s childhood had been spent around many other little boys, and he’d already known they can be bastards.

“Somehow, I don't think so,” Silver says. He accepts a slice of orange from Flint. “Well, I was at work. I was in the kitchen, prepping the vegetables for dinner.”

“Your stew,” Flint says.

“I -- yes.” It's ridiculous, but Silver feels his face warm at that. He always makes stew when it rains, no matter how hot it is outside. “So. I was preparing the stew, had the fire going, the bones boiling. This was about two o’clock, so the rain hadn't yet started. And I nearly lose a finger trying to peel the potatoes with one of Lua’s shitty knives.”

“You would have bounced back,” says Flint. “Two weeks after losing the digit, you’d likely be elected town magistrate or something.”

“That's hilarious,” Silver says. “You're the one who told me that more accidents that occur in the kitchen happen with dull blades versus sharp ones.”

“I’m fairly certain I didn't sound so petulant when I told you that.”

“And _I’m_ fairly certain, were I to lose a couple fingers, it would be _you_ who suffered afterwards.” Silver emphasizes his point by skimming the inside of Flint’s thighs with two fingers, brushing softly against his balls. He smirks when Flint inhales sharply, eyelashes fluttering.

“Okay, I see your point,” Flint breaths. He takes Silver’s hand and brings it up to his mouth, kissing his fingertips lightly. “Keep these safe.”

Silver is tempted to see what happens if he was to stick his fingers in Flint’s mouth. Probably the same as what usually happens, but he’s still tempted to find out. Instead, he clears his throat and accepts another sliver of orange. “Well, I’ve been _trying_. But Lua’s whetstone is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. I may as well be sharpening her knives on a wet sock. And after I nearly sliced my hand open _again_ , I decided, enough was enough. So I told Lua to watch over the pot while I raced home to get my own whetstone.”

“To get _my_ own whetstone, you mean.”

“I thought we shared everything in this house.”

“Like this bath?” Flint asks.

Silver opens his mouth.

“Or your pillow?”

Silver closes his mouth. Flint smiles.

“...I was only going to _borrow_ it,” Silver says eventually. “I was planning on bringing it back that very evening.”

“Uh huh,” says Flint, chewing on a piece of orange and smiling still. “And Lua just let you stroll right out of there?”

“Ah -- no. There may have been a -- scene.” He takes another piece of orange. “By the time I was able to get out of there, the sky was pitch black, pregnant with rain, though it still hadn’t started yet. But the air was heavy with it.”

“So you left anyway.”

“Well, I’d made such a spectacle by that point, I couldn’t just crawl back inside. I can’t stand to look ridiculous, you know.”

“Silver,” says Flint.

“What?”

“Last week, you let Lily braid flowers into your hair.”

“And? What’s your point?” Silver waited.

When Flint had turned up that night, he’d been speechless, staring hotly at Silver the rest of the night, and when he’d finally shuffled Silver out the door, he still had been unable to say a word. But he did choose to ride up on Solomon with him, something he never did, and ground his cock into Silver’s backside the entire ride home, face buried wet and manic in Silver’s braided, flowery hair.

From the look on Flint’s face, he, too, is remembering. “I….have none. Go on.”

“So, it hadn’t started storming yet, but it was _dark_. And no one had bothered to light any of the street lanterns, for obvious reasons. I knew I had to be quick, so I hurried to untie Solomon from the post, and took off down the road."

Silver takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I have a...healthy fear of thunderstorms.”

Flint blinks at him. “You do? I didn’t know that.”

“Do you ever recall seeing me work on deck during a storm?”

“No. But then I don’t recall you doing _any_ work on the ship at all.”

 “... Okay. Fair. But, why do you think I try to keep you inside when it rains?”

 "Aside from my general safety? I thought it was just an excuse to take advantage of me.”

“No. Well, yes. But also my very rational fear of storms. Or more specifically, lightning. I suppose it stems from when I was a boy. I’d been playing in a field with a friend of mine --”

“Solomon Little?”

Silver looks down, look away. He looks out beyond the rows of trees, beyond the cats, where the light becomes too shaded and blurred to see anything at all. He says, “No. His name was Davey O’Farrow. We were playing, and he got struck by lightning not three feet from where I stood.”

“Jesus,” says Flint. “Silver, that’s awful. I’m sorry.”

His tone helps Silver look back at him. There’s the little crease between his eyes, which he does whenever he’s feeling pained. Silver rubs at it with his thumb, which he does whenever Flint is feeling pained.

“Oh,” says Silver, “don’t be. He survived it.”

“What?” Flint asks beneath Silver’s hand. “Really?”

“Yeah. Got a terrible scar from it, and an exceptionally tragic stutter, but he was fine. Grew up into a right bastard, too.” Silver leans forward so he can whisper, “Philanderer.”

Flint leans in too, smiling crookedly. “The scoundrel.”

Silver takes another piece of orange, leaving the last one for Flint. “But I’ll never forget the moment it struck,” Silver says, mouth full. “How the field was suddenly _white_ with light, and the smell of meat. The way his hair smoldered, and how he wouldn’t wake up right away. How I had been so close to death that the hairs on my body stood on end for hours afterwards. I remember how it felt like the lightning was lingering in the air afterwards, looking for another body to strike. It’s an experience that stays, so I make it an effort to not be in a position for more lightning to find me.”

Silver had been witness to many other terrible storms in his lifetime, and each one added a new level of fear, so that, by the time Flint had strapped himself to a ship wheel and Silver had watched his friend drown, Silver knew that Hell itself was a thunderstorm.

He likes a gentle rain, though. A spring shower, a cloudy afternoon, when he can be inside and dry and listening to the sounds. He finds this comforting, and unlike the other, he has no real reason for it. No source. Rain can’t hurt him the way a storm could.

Flint begins to peel the other orange. “But you went out the other day. For a whetstone.”

“For the _principle_ of it.”

“Okay,” says Flint. “Because when I think _principles_ , I immediately think _John Silver_. Ow, fuck!”

Silver stops pinching the skin above Flint’s hipbone, but he doesn’t feel sorry. “So I was on edge when I set out for home,” Silver continues with a glare. “If it was the storm looming, or the argument with Lua, or the hour or so I spent struggling to peel vegetables, or a heady combination thereof -- all of it set my teeth on edge. I decided, then, to take that shortcut that you insist --”

“It’s _not_ a shortcut.”

“It is! You just --”

“It takes us _twice_ as long --”

“Your shoddy cart and shoddy _knees_ just can’t take a single _hill_ \--”

“The damn _mule_ can’t take that fucking mountain --”

“Mountain? Are you fu--”

“His heart is going to give out long before my fucking _knees_ do --”

“Okay! Well -- we made it up fine. When we reached the peak of your _mountain_ , I could see the storm coming in over the treetops. It was about a mile west, and it was just coming down in sheets. And….I could see the lightning. It was _stalking_ across the fields, reaching out like spiders towards me. My heart was pounding, so I dug my heel in and set off down the _mountain_.

“And as we started to run, that’s when I heard it. Footsteps, pounding behind me.”

“Footsteps?” Flint hands him another orange slice, brow furrowed.

“You know that path, for the few times I’ve made you tread it. It’s too narrow once you’re over the hill. The trees canopy overhead, there’s barely a road. At first I thought it was me, but there’s nothing for sound to echo off of. And when I slowed down a fraction to see, I could still hear the steps behind me.”

“A man’s steps?” Flint asks, because he knows how good Silver’s hearing is, and doesn’t doubt him.

“No,” says Silver. “Hooves. Someone riding. Someone gaining on me.”

“Who was it?”

Silver resists the urge to look away again. “You know how I don’t sleep much?”

Flint pauses where he’s about to eat. He says, with an odd tone, “I’ve noticed.”

Silver sighs. “I suppose I spent so long trying to be fearless in front of others. But in my heart, in my soul, I am nothing but a fearful man. There are many things I don’t fear, not any longer. Lightning, I suppose, goes too deep for me to overcome, unless I find myself in battle against nature itself. I’m not afraid of dying, or killing. But I am afraid of being seen. Of being _found._ Of being discovered, our whole lives uncovered. I lay awake all night sometimes, watching the door from our bed, waiting for someone to come in. Or certain I’d come out of the kitchens one afternoon to find a man I’d let live after a raid dining at one of my tables, after I’d made _sure_ my face was remembered. I want to stay invisible from the world. I want my every movement to leave a trail only you could ever find.”

It seems silly to say it, here, the two of them naked and holding each other out in the light of day. But these are not fears he ever has when Flint is awake. There isn’t anything Silver doubts Flint could or would do, to keep them safe. But when Flint is asleep, or Flint is not there, and Silver is alone with his damn thoughts -- that’s when the fear creeps in.

“I don’t know why my mind automatically leapt to the idea I was being followed. It could have just been someone else hurrying to get somewhere before the storm hit. But seeing the lightning made me remember how I am a fearful man, and hearing the steps behind made me remember all the things I have to fear.”

Flint slowly threads his fingers through Silver’s, their hands joined underwater. “So what did you do?”

“I ran,” says Silver. “It was pure instinct. Long John Silver would have turned and fought, but the man I was _before_ would have ran, and I was him for much, much longer.”

Once, a couple years ago, Max had shown him the first letter Billy had written as Long John Silver, that she kept in case she ever wanted to have him arrested and put on trial. He doesn’t think Flint ever saw it. The wording was a bit too dramatic, even by Silver’s standards, but some of the phrasing haunted him for long afterwards, which he supposes was the point of it all. But it had haunted Silver differently. He’d just kept thinking, _before_ he had met Flint, he’d been nothing. Afterwards, after Flint, is when he’d started _becoming_. And he doesn’t know now if he’s ever stopped.

“I tried looking behind me,” Silver says, “but the branches hung too long and we moved too fast. The road, as you’ve stated a number of times, dipped and curved too often for me to see anything. I caught glimpses of a horse’s legs through the trees, but it could have easily been the trees themselves. There was nothing clear or sane going on in my head, not when the thunder was rumbling louder and the first few drops of rain began to fall, blinding me, not when I was keenly aware that I had no weapons on me at all, save for my crutch.

“I was about a mile home, and maybe it was my imagination, but I thought perhaps I smelled your oranges over the rain. I’m _sure_ I smelled them, as sure as I can smell it now. I pulled up short, and suddenly I remembered who I am.” He’d remembered, he is the person who got to stand beside Captain Flint back then. He is the person who gets to sleep beside Santiago Quijana now. “I’m _not_ the person who runs. And so I grabbed my crutch from where it’d been threaded through the saddle, jumped down, and stood on the road. And I waited. And he finally came up the road, running right for me.”

“ _Who_?” Flint asks.

“ _Solomon_.”

Flint frowns at him, mouth agape with a question.

“It would seem,” says Silver brusquely, “in my haste to get home as I swiftly as possible, I had untied and mounted the wrong horse. Solomon must have gotten loose, too.”

Flint blinks at him once and the crease disappears from his eyes. He blinks again and his mouth snaps shut.

And then, like a full-scale riot, he tips his head back and _laughs_. He tries to smother the uprising with a fist, but then he happens to glance at Silver and starts laughing harder, cupping his chest like he’s in pain. His eyes squeeze shut as he leans forward, holding himself as he continues to howl with it, his teeth bright beneath his auburn beard.

“It’s not that funny!” Silver says over the laughter. He now recalls why he hadn’t told Flint about this in the first place. “I was nearly arrested for horse thievery.”

That sets Flint off again, laughing and stomping a foot on the bottom of the tub, water sloshing everywhere. He knows he’s only burying himself deeper, but Flint’s green eyes are shining with tears, so he says, “I’m serious. When I went to bring him back, I found Fernandez in front of the tavern with a pitchfork, trying to round up a mob.”

Flint is gasping, falling back into the crook of Silver’s arm. The rest of the orange is lost to the tub water. “It --” Flint tries to say around his own rebellion, “It was _Fernandez’s_ horse?”

“Yeah. Listen, I know --”

“ _Silver_.”

“I said I _know_ \--”

“Silver, that horse is _white_.” Flint’s head falls back again to laugh, even harder than before.

“It’s _gray_!”

“A pale gray!”

“It was dark out, I told you.”

“It was two in the afternoon!” Flint starts cracking up again, wrapping an arm around his stomach. Silver is only glad he hasn’t pointed out that Fernandez’s horse, unlike Solomon, is actually, in fact, a _horse._

“Poor Solomon,” says Silver, now starting to laugh himself. “You were right about that path being too much for him, by the way. I was sure his heart was going to give out as soon as he caught up with us. He was extremely upset at being left behind, too. He nearly bit my hand off, once he could breathe normally again.”

Flint’s laugh is now more of a wheeze, his fingers digging into Silver’s knee as he tries to calm down. His eyes are still wet, and every couple of seconds he starts laughing silently as he looks at Silver’s face. He looks like he’s having trouble catching his breath, but that doesn’t stop him for pressing a hard kiss into Silver’s cheek. He lingers there and Silver can feel his lips curving into another smile, laughter pressing into his skin like a brand.

Suddenly, Silver is reminded of a lifetime of ridiculous and stupid things he’s done. Things he’d always been embarrassed by, things he didn’t want Flint or anyone to ever know. Now, he thinks he needs to tell Flint every little detail, if it would keep the laugh lines permanently etched into his face.

“You’re an absurd creature,” Flint says finally, taking a deep breath to try and calm down.

“So are you, for loving me,” Silver says quickly, then kisses Flint in case he wants to rebuttal. It doesn’t look like he does, but just in case. “God. We are an embarrassment to pirates, you are aware.”

“I am,” Flint says, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Then he says, “This water is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my whole fucking life.”

It truly is. It’s gray with dirt and spunk and orange peel. Silver sighs, leaning out to let loose the closest plug. One of the cats is sleeping beneath it, and skitters away suddenly with an angry scream. “Can we have a bath from our bath?”

“We’ll use some washcloths,” Flint says. “Like Hell am I filling that tub again today.”

He hops out of the tub, forgoing the ladder entirely. He drips into the wild grass curling around his feet, naked and stretching. Sunlight and shadow stream over his pale skin, the silhouette of leaves and branches and oranges dance across his body as he goes to find his trousers. Silver leans against the walls of the tub, watching for every shape and color. There isn’t a drop of blue in him.

Suddenly, Silver hears a crunch of sticks and leaves from behind. He turns swiftly and sees -- Solomon, wandering out from the orange trees. As soon as Flint sees him, he bends over and laughs again, clutching his trousers to his chest.

“Honest to God!” Silver glares at Solomon, who is impervious. “I _know_ I tied you up this morning. You are one crafty son of a bitch.”

Solomon starts to drink the diminishing bathwater in response, until Flint is able to drag him away from it, though he hasn’t stopped laughing. He’s never going to be able to look Solomon the mule in the eye again.

Silver grabs his crutch and hoists himself out the tub. Flint is wearing pants again, and helps Silver back into his own. Don Pablos helps by attacking each pant leg in the process, until Silver can scoop her up and place her on top of Solomon. She's a feral, wild creature with a healthy and distinct wariness of heights, but soldiers through by curling up behind Solomon's mane and going to sleep.

“We wasted the entire day,” Flint says, squinting up at the sun.

“Good,” says Silver, because it is. The sky is clear and forgiving, and it looks like the season of thunderstorms is finally over. “Come on.” He throws the rest of their clothes over Solomon’s back, except Flint’s hat. He puts that on Flint’s head. “Lua sent over a couple of fish with the tub this morning. I’ll cook it just the way you like it.”

  
  
  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an anon asked for silverflint and hair. I technically delivered.

Flint walks into the kitchen one morning to find the table cleared.

Which is….odd. He usually leaves everything before going out to pick the day’s crop. The cold water from the well he uses to clean his few dishes is refreshing after hours under the unforgiving St. Augustine sun. He doesn’t ever expect Silver to clean up after him; he doesn’t really expect Silver to get out of bed until he’s ready to leave for work, if he’s not joining him in the grove.

Not that he usually sleeps more, but more often he’ll just lie naked on top of the sheets, trying to complain loud enough about the heat for Flint to hear him outside. Perhaps he used Flint’s excuse of cleaning to cool down.

It’s unnaturally still in the kitchen. All that moves is the flakes of dust through the sunlight streaming through the window.

Flint walks arounds the table, still puzzled at its emptiness. Sweat clings to him, his shirt hanging to his back like a layer of paint. He scratches at his neck, his hair having fallen loose from its tie during his morning labors. It feels as oppressive as the heat in the kitchen, and he supposes, as he moves to tie it back again, that there’s no reason he can’t just have a wash himself. Not everything needs to have a sensible reason.

It should be unbelievable, that Silver is able to move to silently. It happens like a dream. One second Flint is alone in the kitchen, and the next Silver is pressed into his back, pushing him against the table.

“Jesus!” Flint lets go of his hair with a start, gripping the arm now wrapped around his waist. “Silver?”

Silver doesn’t say anything, but the sound of his crutch falling to the floor so Silver can grab a fistful of Flint’s hair is answer enough. So is the way Silver noses at Flint’s scalp, panting into his hair desperately as his other hand starts to stroke wildly over Flint’s chest.

Flint gasps, his back bowing due to the grip on his hair. He has no more questions. He doesn’t ask what has overcome Silver. He doesn’t ask if Silver had the dream again, because it’s obvious that he has, and he needs to remember Flint like an animal lost in the wilderness, scratching and scrambling to get back home.

(The dream, Flint asks weeks after the last time it happened, isn’t really a dream because Silver claims he doesn’t sleep deep enough to dream. The dream, more his own thoughts lingering just beneath the surface of sleep, horror of his own devising he can’t escape no matter how near he is to waking. The dream, of Flint’s hair falling out. But not like the way Flint had shaved it himself, or the way most men’s do when they age. The dream, of Flint’s hair falling out in clumps, coming away bloody and black, then pieces of his scalp, his whole face crumbling away from the top down like an ancient ruin. The dream, of Flint decaying before Silver’s eyes, and it always begins with his hair.)

Silver starts tugging Flint’s trousers down one-handed, unwilling to loosen the grip on his hair. It’s difficult to tell with how frantic his movements are, but Flint knows he’s shaking all over. Each frenzied breath huffed into his scalp travels through his body, like Silver is breathing life into every nerve he has. He doesn’t yet feel as desperate at Silver does, still too caught off guard by the suddenness of what was happening, but he’s already writhing against Silver, helping to get his trousers down passed his knees.

(Sometimes after any bad dream, Silver can’t be near Flint for hours. One time he disappeared in the early morning and only came back in the middle of the night, inexplicably soaking wet despite the lack of rain that day. Sometimes after a dream, he just needs to hold Flint, and won’t let him get out of bed no matter how much Flint protests. Sometimes after a dream, Silver can’t speak for hours and won’t let Flint touch him at all. Sometimes after a dream, Silver needs to fuck Flint like he’s trying to consume him, like he’s trying to crawl all the way inside and never leave.)

Silver shifts to the side, using Flint to brace himself with a hand on his back while he pivots on his foot. The hand in his hair never loosens. He breathes heavily into Flint’s neck, and Flint breathes heavily into the kitchen air.

A jar of oil tumbles clumsily onto the table, and then Silver is pressed into his side instead of his back, the hard line of his cock rubbing against Flint’s bare hip as his hand slides under his loose shirt.

Around a mouthful of hair and into his skin, Silver hisses, “ _Open yourself._ ”

But Flint had already grabbed the oil and been opening it with shaky hands. He can’t believe he’d thought he’d been hot, before. He never knows true heat except when Silver is with him. Everything else in his life is tepid at best.

When he slides a single slick finger into himself, it’s Silver who moans, low and crazed into his ear. He adds another digit almost immediately, stretching his legs as wide as he can with Silver braced against him and his trousers around his ankles. Silver’s hand roams wildly over his chest, hard over his stomach, over his nipples, like he’s reassuring himself that everything – his heart, his blood, his skin, his bones – is right where it should be. The way he’s touching Flint, and the way Flint touches himself, feels like they’re both moving blindly with each other, navigating the sunny room by touch alone.

Flint pushes back on his fingers, trapped between the table and Silver and himself. He’s only half-hard but he feels eager and young, filled with a yearning he hadn’t even noticed before Silver had started tugging on his hair. He’s edging a third finger near his hole, even though he’s not completely loose yet, but the way Silver starts gripping tighter against him, groaning with abandon and nipping at the back of his neck, where his hair starts, means Silver can’t wait much longer. And neither can Flint, really. These moments are like being strangled suddenly from behind. One minute, everything seems fine, and the next all he needs is one thing in order to live. He needs Silver in him now like he needs air in his lungs. It’s as necessary and sustaining as breathing.

Silver grabs his wrist suddenly, tugging his fingers out of his ass. Flint doesn’t try to tether his own moan at the loss. There’s no need to keep such a thing quelled here, but Silver bites at the back of his neck softly, soothing. Flint feels his oiled hand pulled towards Silver’s hard cock and he grabs on instinctively, the flesh solid and hot in his grasp. He gives him a few awkward tugs behind his back, getting him slick as Silver lets go of his wrist and starts stroking his back heavily.

“Can,” Silver mutters, twisting his face so he can be heard through Flint’s hair. “ _Can I_.”

His desperation bleeds into Flint, as easily as if he’d cut open their palms and held his hand. “ _Please_ ,” Flint gasps, giving Silver’s cock one last firm stroke before letting go. He leans forward as far as he can on the table, feeling Silver stretch with him to stay buried in his hair. Using the leverage from Silver’s grip, he stops holding himself up on the table so he can spread his ass open. His back bowing, the table pressing sharply into the tops of his thighs – It’s not exactly comfortable, but it is exactly perfect.

Silver pivots again, moving right behind him. Flint feels his face shift against the back of his head, his forehead pressed into the back of his neck so Silver can look down. That’s about all the warning he gets before he starts to feel Silver slide into him. It’s still tight, and Silver moves a bit too fast, so he’s got no time to adjust to the fullness before Silver bottoms out in him.

Then there are little hitched breaths puffing into Flint’s ear like voices in his head, whispering only the best and most dangerous ideas. Now that Silver is inside him, he lets go of his own ass to hold onto the table, scratching at the wood as Silver wraps his arm around his waist again. He’s flat against his back, trembling so hard against him it feels like their house is falling down.

Flint tips his head back, rubbing his own hair against the side of Silver’s face. “I’m fine,” he says, clenching around Silver’s cock. “I’m good. It’s good.”

Silver digs his nails into his stomach and lets out a keening, animal cry before pulling out and thrusting back in again. Flint doesn’t know how he’s catching his breath, the way his face is so tightly held against his neck. The hand in his hair redoubles its grasp, twisting locks around each finger like vines. The sensation shivers through him as he works himself back onto Silver’s cock. No raging sun can compare to Silver’s heat. It can’t even cast a shadow.

And then Silver’s hand reaches his cock, and it’s another match thrown into their pyre. He cries out and bucks into it, clutching the back of Silver’s head, needing something substantial to hold on to. Silver is just sending sparks into him, and they are lost in each other’s fire, helpless to do anything but fan the flames. When Silver thrusts hard and fast into him in time with each stroke, he is on fire. When Silver comes in him suddenly, wet cry muffled by his wet hair, strands caught in his teeth, he is on fire. When Silver keeps stroking him, stroking him, _stroking_ _him_ , still shaking and finally able to speak in full sentences, finally saying, “Please, please come, I need it, I need you to come, please, Captain, I need to feel it, please come for me,” Flint is on fire and when he comes all over Silver’s hand and their clean table, he thinks they might just burn the whole damn orange grove to the ground.

They hold onto each other, panting, and each exhale is smoke, filling the open room.

This has happened before, and Flint knows if he’s not the first to move, Silver would happily stay this way the rest of the day. Which might feel good for both of them, but he figures it’s probably good for Silver to realize that life can’t stop for every bad thought that crawls inside their minds. Otherwise, they’d likely never move ever again.

He lets go of Silver’s head and leans forward on the table. He takes a deep breath. Even though it makes no sense whatsoever, he no longer wants to wash. Whenever Silver fucks him, he wants the smell and the touch to remain as long as possible.

Ignoring his own release on the wood, Flint says, “Thank you for clearing the table.”

(“It felt like a punishment,” Silver told him, when he’d finally told him about the dream, weeks after having it last. “Seeing you without your hair for the first time. I mean, I was being punished, with my – with the leg. And. Everything else. I knew I was punished already, but….that felt like the punishment. To never see your red hair again. And then I really saw you, saw how lethal and cold and beautiful you looked without it, and that felt like a punishment too. I’d never wanted to know anything as badly as I had wanted to know you. And each missing strand had felt like a step further away from me, and I’d never understand you. And without understanding you, you’d be gone from me forever.”)

(Silver’s head had been in his lap, Flint stroking his face. He couldn’t see the way Flint’s cheeks had flushed when he’d muttered, “It’s just hair.”)

(So of course Silver had looked up at him. He’d smiled when he’d said, “There’s never been anything _just_ about you.”)

Silver stops breathing so wildly into the back of his head. He’s calmed, just nuzzling at him like he normally does when they’re in bed together. But he’s stopped trembling finally, and after a moment, he leans away, enough to pull out. He uses Flint as a crutch to shift over to the nearest chair and sits down hard. His eyes are wet, and he looks how he always does after waking from a dream he says he doesn’t dream.

“You weren’t here,” he says softly, touching all of Flint’s fingers. “I needed to hold something of yours.”

Flint slowly puts his trousers back on, and tucks Silver back into his own, since he looks like he had no intention of doing so himself. Then he leans down to pick up his crutch, shaking his head so it looks accidental when his hair slips over his ears, falling into his face. He doesn’t know how to tell him that everything he owns doesn’t really belong to him. It’s all Silver’s to hold, because he only ever wants Silver to hold him. He places the crutch against the table and leans towards him.

Silver immediately grabs his hair and his face, brushing it slopping behind his ears so it keeps falling back when he kisses him over and over again. Between each kiss, their hair tangling now between their lips, strands of red and black knotting together, Flint says, “I’m good.” He says, “I’m not going anywhere.” And together they burn through the rest of the morning like that


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [elle](http://ellelan.tumblr.com) asked for jealousy, then [sam](http://samhound.tumblr.com) said something about them dancing, and then things spiraled out of control
> 
> rated M for thoughts of smut but no actual smut :|

* * *

 

Silver is leaving church, and he’s angry.

Which is really disappointing, because leaving church is the best part about going to church. It’s the only part where he’s able to relax, when the talk of damnation is over. When the faces of every person who’d told him to fucking go to hell, who’d told him he was definitely going to hell, that he’d personally sent to hell -- they all start to fade as soon as the service ended and he could quietly nudge Flint awake. Church Sundays are the worst, but at least the rest of the day is theirs, and they also typically spend the early mornings before reminding each other of all their eternal sins of the flesh, which is also nice.

But now the sermon is over, and they’re standing outside in the livid sunshine, and Silver is up on Solomon, still angry and uncomfortable. And it’s his own fault this time, instead of God’s.

Well, his own fault, and Reynaldo’s.

Lua’s hand on her nephew’s shoulder is maternal: both protective and pushy as she nudges him towards them.

“Reynaldo will fix your roof,” she says. “He’s helped his father build their house and has fixed up my own for many years now. He’s very good with his hands.”

Reynaldo flushes a little under the praise, but he does look good with his hands. Though not as tall as Billy was, Reynaldo has the same upper build, and the inability to find a shirt that fits properly. He’s still got a boyish face, all of 17-years old, with the faintest dusting of stubble coating his strong jawline like pollen. His warm honey, almond-shaped eyes hide behind a flop of light brown hair, and they’re staring right at Flint. As they have been since he and Lua first approached.

Silver recognizes the look. He has difficulty understanding most people unless he’s truly focused, but he has no problem seeing himself in others. He can always tell if someone is a liar, for instance. He knows if a man had grown up an orphan, if a woman knew how to dodge a punch or a slap.

So he can definitely tell when someone is wondering how Flint would look with his full bottom lip dragging on the underside of their cock. Silver sees himself in all kinds of people. And he sees himself in Reynaldo outside the church, as easily as he can see the Christ carved into the cross above the door.

Flint, of course, doesn’t see anything.

“Oh,” he says, blinking at Lua, glancing at the boy. “That’s very kind, but I think we can manage it on their own.”

They could not fix the roof on their own. The leaks grow larger with each rainfall, the last of which had nearly ruined an entire shelf of Flint’s books, and had created a smell they couldn’t seem to get out of the arm chair. But Silver can’t climb onto the roof, and he won’t let Flint go up there under any circumstances.

“It’s going to rain again this afternoon,” Lua points out. “And _he’s_ afraid of you getting hurt trying to fix it.”

Flint _looks_ at Silver. 

“That’s….not exactly what I said,” Silver protests weakly.

“ _E_ _xactly_ what you said,” Lua says, “is ‘if he goes up there, he’ll slip and fall and break his neck and die instantly and I can’t afford to throw him a proper funeral.’”

Silver had said that. But only because Lua got him talking while he’d been busy cooking and distracted and had been about to admit that he can’t live without Flint (or just won’t). So he’d had to quickly edit himself.

“We don’t have the money to spare right now,” Flint admits, then adds, “For the roof or a funeral.”

Reynaldo laughs, like it’s the funniest thing he’d ever heard. His eyes haven’t left Flint, but they roam, taking in his eyes, his hair, his lips and his collarbone. His freckled forearms and his strong hand wrapped around Solomon’s reins, keeping him still. Silver knows he’s the second-to-last man to judge someone’s subtlety (Flint of course being the very last) but _come on._

“Reynaldo has the supplies,” Lua says, pushing her nephew closer to them. “And I’ll just take the money for his time out of Juan’s pay.”

Silver hates Church Sundays.

 

* * *

 

The walk back to the grove is awkward. It’s not like they spent much of their time talking about their sexual deviances, or all the people they’d murdered or shit they stole in the past, or anything like that. But the knowledge that they _can’t_ talk about that kind of thing hangs over them like a rockslide. It doesn’t so much hover in the air as crush the conversation entirely.

Reynaldo either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He’s riding beside them, trying very hard to converse with Flint. He’d failed to get Flint to ride with him, even in the cart with all his supplies attached to his horse. Silver can’t help but smirk at Reynaldo’s pathetic pout when Flint opts to walk beside them instead.

“My aunt says you run a orangery?” Reynaldo says. He’s still looking down at Flint and not watching the road at all. “Is that all you grow?”

“Yeah,” Flint is forced to respond. It’s the fifth question the boy has asked that Flint has failed to embellish on. Silver feels anxious every time, inexplicably waiting for Flint to be reeled in by Reynaldo’s charms, however pathetic. Probably all his charm rested in his biceps, which Flint can’t see clearly walking on the ground.

After another awkward pause, Reynaldo asks, “Don’t you ever get tired of oranges?”

“No,” Silver snaps, even though he hadn’t been addressed once. He keeps his hand tight on his crutch and he doesn’t know why. He didn’t want Flint to answer that question and he doesn’t know why.

“Oranges are my favorite fruit,” Reynaldo assures Flint quickly.  

“Yeah,” Flint says again. “They’re good.”

The animals trot on, dust rising around their feet. The sun is shining brightly overhead, but Silver has no doubt Lua is right about rain this afternoon. He can feel the static in the hairs on his arm. He can feel it in the whirls of his fingertips. There’s already a storm within him.

It starts to howl when Flint asks, out of nowhere, “Have you ever tried a guinep?”

“No,” Reynaldo answers eagerly. “What are they?”

The look on Flint’s face is instantly regretful, but Silver feels no less calm. “They’re a little like limes. They don’t grow around here, I suppose. They’re good. I haven’t had one in years.”

“Are they sweeter than oranges?” There’s a heat in Reynaldo’s eyes that Silver recognizes. He wants Flint to tell him how sweet his fruit is, how one bite and suck on the fleshy pulp will have juice trickling down your chin, making your lips sticky with it, the flavor bursting on your tongue like wine too fine for you to have ever drank before. “I bet you could grow them here,” Reynaldo says, hungering for something he has never tasted.

But Flint just says, “Nah. They’re smaller, greener. Hard rind like an orange, but the insides are pretty much the same.” Idly, he pats Solomon’s side, and the thumb that brushes against Silver’s thigh as his hand drags away, snuffs the storm out of him as easily as it would have put out a candle flame. “I think I’ll just stick with oranges.”

They’re almost home, and though the storm in him is quelled, Silver feels cold and wind-ravaged, parts of him blown away inside. All that’s left is the smell of fire and brimstone from this morning’s sermon that he couldn’t ignore as easily as Flint had, and the sound of Reynaldo’s excited flirting.

Silver hates being stuck in a storm, but he thinks right now he’d prefer it.

 

* * *

 

He’s in the kitchen, preparing his stew for dinner. Even with the fire going beside him, the kitchen feels cool and dim, cavernous. He’s not really paying attention to what he’s doing, but he’s been cooking now for far longer than he’d ever anticipated doing in his life, and he can dice tomatoes without much thought.

Silver is listening.

He can hear Flint and Reynaldo outside on the front porch, through the open windows. They’ve been out there for longer than Silver would have expected they’d need to be for such small leaks. Not that he knows anything about fixing roofs, clearly. But he doesn’t think it takes all fucking day.

Perhaps because Reynaldo spends so much time fucking _chatting_.

“Are those your sketches I saw on the table inside?” Reynaldo’s voice, Silver can tell, is coming from the roof, so at least he might be working. But that means he’s yelling, which means Silver can hear every word.

“No,” Flint replies, outside holding the ladder still. “They’re Juan’s. He’s very talented, isn't he?”

“Oh.” Reynaldo sounds disappointed. “Yes. I’m sure they’ll look better when they’re done.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Silver whispers to a tomato. He doesn’t slice it. He presses the sharp tip of his knife into the fleshy red outside and slowly stabs down, and keeps stabbing down until he hits the wood of the table. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to kill you.”

“What do _you_ do for fun out here, then?” Reynaldo asks loudly. He says it so it sounds like _we’d have so much fun if you bent me over and fucked me right here on the porch._

“Fun?” Flint says it so it sounds like a word from another language. “Oh. We. Uh. We talk, you know. We read.”

“The Bible?”

“Sure,” says Flint. “I mean. Sometimes. I have a lot of books.”

Reynaldo laughs, that high, rolling, charming laugh. Silver stops stabbing the tomato and begins to _carve_.

“Me and my friends play music for fun,” Reynaldo says. “Like my uncle did. We play all night, and dance. You should join us some night.”

“Dance?” Again, Flint sounds like he’s learning a new word, it sticking to his tongue like a bad taste. “Oh, no. I haven’t danced in….well, since my wife was alive, I think.”

Silver blinks at the pulverized tomato. That had sounded almost sincere, and while Flint is good at lying, he often struggles with improvised smalltalk. But that had sounded _real_.

Then Silver realizes it _is_. Flint hasn’t danced since his wife was alive. Since Mrs. Barlow was alive, and Silver has to stab the knife into the wood so he can clutch the counter and _breathe_. He can’t imagine Flint dancing, spinning around a brightly lit, gilded room on the balls of his feet, with a freshly cleaned coat and well-groomed fingernails. He can’t see him dancing, though for some reason he can picture clearly Flint holding Mrs. Barlow close, and he _aches_ for him. He'll never get to see Flint dance. Because Silver can barely walk forward in a straight line, let alone dance with Flint. And if he ever had to see Flint dance now with another person -- well. There’d be no reality where Silver would ever see that. He hates himself, but not that much. Though perhaps he’ll see something like it in an everlasting torment, when he finally lands himself in Hell.

Silver sighs. He hates Church Sundays. He’s not going to sleep all week now.

Reynaldo says, “You definitely should join us sometime. If you’ve forgotten how to dance, I can show you how.”

Soundlessly, Silver steps away from the table and walks out back, away from the voices. He doesn’t want to hear Flint’s answer, because anything other than a “Go fuck yourself” would be unsatisfactory.

In the rear yard, Solomon is tied to his post beside Reynaldo’s horse. Neither seem particularly excited about the other’s presence. A storm is rolling in over the grove, so the sky above is a steely black, while the sun still shines warmly over the house.

Silver deftly unties Solomon’s reins, and the mule wastes no time wandering away to eat some grass beneath the orange trees. Curiously, Silver also unties Reynaldo’s horse. It doesn’t move from the post. With another sigh, he ties it up again and goes back inside, leaving Solomon to explore.

He walks back through the house and onto the front porch. Flint stops squinting up at Reynaldo when he hears him approach.

“Hey Santi,” Silver says quietly. “Looks like the mule has come loose again. Would you mind going to get him? My side is hurting today.”

“That damned creature,” Flint says, taking a step towards the house. But then he stops, looking up at Reynaldo. He’s on the top rung, halfway onto the roof, but he sets down his hammer and starts to climb down.

“I can hold this,” Silver says, gripping the side of the ladder. “Best hurry before he eats all your oranges.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Flint mutters, rushing inside, because it isn’t an empty threat and they both know it.

Silver watches him stomp away. When he’s gone, he looks up at Reynaldo. Reynaldo is looking down at him, which is good.

Silver doesn’t say anything.

He looks Reynaldo in the eye and thinks about killing. He looks him in the eye and remembers how he felt killing Dufresne. Remembers how he felt killing every man he ever killed. He usually doesn’t linger on these thoughts, though they are easy to pull forward so soon after church (and he really won’t sleep this week now). He doesn’t blink as he looks up at Reynaldo, remembering the recoil of a pistol, the pressure needed to cut through muscle and bone. He remembers fathers crying for their children, grown men weeping for their mothers. The smell of blood and shit and gunpowder and salt, hanging in the air like an admittance of guilt. He remembers wordless shrieks and faceless victims. He remembers the survivors, who he made sure that, to this day, would be lying awake at night in fear of him. He remembers seascapes of gore, and just to be completely sure his point has been made, he remembers a little bit about _before_ , too. He remembers a time when he wanted to do these things, but couldn’t. He remembers the time he hadn’t been strong enough but oh, if he had, what horrors he would have wrought.

Reynaldo’s hammer slips from his hand onto the porch with a thud. His face is so white, Silver thinks he might faint and fall from the height. His throat -- still boyish and long -- bobs heavily as he tried to swallow, as he tries not to vomit. Silver can feel a tremble through his hold on the ladder.

Silver bends to pick up the hammer, and when he slides it back into Reynaldo’s limp grasp, he smiles. Somehow, Reynaldo turns even whiter.

“The roof looks good,” Silver says idly. “I don’t think there’ll be another leak for at least a hundred years.”

But Reynaldo looks too frightened to move, let alone finish up the job, which kind of defeats the purpose. So Silver leaves him alone without another word. The ladder looks sturdy enough to hold him.

He finds Flint coming inside the back door scowling.

“One day, I’m going to teach you how to tie a proper fucking kn--”

Silver kisses him, pushing him into the door hard. He clutches at his neck, sliding his bad leg between Flint’s thighs, and bites his lip.

Before -- at first -- Flint had frozen whenever Silver had initiated a kiss, like he couldn’t believe it to be actually happening. He took so long to stop being shocked everytime, and Silver would have to patiently coax him back to Earth. Not that he ever minded.

But now, the opposite occurs. Silver kisses him, and Flint kisses back instantly, without thought. It’s become as ingrained as his breathing pattern, something both life-sustaining and effortless. Inhale, kiss Silver, exhale, repeat. He kisses as assuredly as he does mostly everything else, and instead it takes him a few moments to remember the world around him. 

So Silver gets to suck on his tongue for five whole seconds before he’s being pushed back with a startled laugh. “What’s come over you?” Flint says in a hushed whisper.

The absence of beard burning Silver’s neck is sudden and startling, as painful as a good memory. He crowds Flint again, rubbing his cheek against Flint’s and murmurs, “You can right now, if you like.”

Flint still isn’t pink enough, even as he shudders at the words and at the warm breath in his ear. He _needs_ to be pinker, so Silver takes advantage of his closed eyes and sucks hard on Flint’s bottom lip, running his hand wildly through his hair.

Again, it takes Flint a few seconds to remember they aren’t alone here. It might have taken longer, if the hesitant sound of Reynaldo’s hammer hadn’t chosen that moment to start up again.

Flint doesn’t push him away this time, because he only ever has the strength to do that maybe once a day, but he does manage to slide away. “Are you _trying_ to get us killed?” he asks, still laughing a little.

Silver just shrugs, because they’ve both been trying to kill each other since the moment they first met, in some form or another. Guns and knives, evil plots and betrayals had slowly evolved into touches and long looks, sworn oaths whispered into skin in the dead of night -- each gesture simultaneously more than they can bare and not nearly enough to satisfy. Where else can that lead but death?

Flint huffs, tugging gently on the curl of Silver’s mustache. He knows by now not to get too close, if he means to not get pulled in again. “Come on,” he says, heading back outside. It hasn’t even occurred to him to fix his hair, his shirt, to try and hide the swell of his lips, hide the flush. He has no idea how he looks. “The boy will be done soon and then I’ll help you get dinner ready.”

Silver stays in the kitchen while Flint steps back outside. He can hear him ask, “Almost finished?”

He can’t see them, but he can tell by the slight pause after that question that Reynaldo is looking at Flint. He knows because Reynaldo takes one look at Flint’s pink face and drops his hammer again. The heavy thud as it hits the porch is the most satisfying thing Silver has ever heard.

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to wait out the storm?” Fling says. It’s muffled by the walls of the house. He’s still out on the porch. “I’d hate for you to get hurt out there.”

Silver feels no desire to see Reynaldo off, so he stays in the kitchen, nursing the heavy stone of anxiety in his belly like a weak animal. He knows Flint only extended the offer for him to stay because Reynaldo is, technically, Lua’s kin. Silver doesn’t actually want him to get hurt, and the first few drops of rain are beginning to fall. He stands over the fire, stirring his stew. He has a feeling it’s not going to taste that great today.

“My horse can move pretty fast.” Reynaldo no longer sounds so boisterous and assertive. He sounds small and eager to leave, and Silver feels a rush of relief, until Reynaldo says, so quietly Silver almost can’t hear it, “My mother will be waiting up for me.”

Silver closes his eyes, trying to stay upright as the guilt grows over the stone like moss and morning dew. He no longer just feels it in his stomach, though. The whole of his insides feel heavy and cracking. He’s such an idiot. It’s hardly Reynaldo’s fault for wanting Flint, anymore than it’s Flint fault for being so perfect. It’s his own stupid, sick mind replaying those same false scenarios in his head -- everything Flint might be able to do with a young lover that he can’t do with Silver. A _whole_ lover, one who could hold him up at any time, one without daily, debilitating agonies, without unending nightmares. A lover who could sleep, who could wake up each morning, able-bodied and ready to help Flint with anything that ails him, having no ills himself. A lover who can dance with him.

He looks down into the black center of the fire, and he wants to stick his entire rotten body into it. He sees himself doing it, too: calmly setting aside the stew so Flint can still eat it later, and letting himself fully into the flames. The steam and smoke wafting in his face as he stirs feels like he’s already done it. What a relief it would be, once the fire would start licking his skin, to feel a pain he can actually see.

He’s startled out of his reverie by strong arms wrapping around his waist. Flint flattens himself against Silver’s back and breathes deeply into his neck, sighing with relief at finally being alone.

“I hope he gets back alright,” Flint mumbles, tugging Silver tighter into him, urging him to relax. “Lua will probably fire you if we get her nephew killed.”

Silver squeezes his eyes shut again. He’s shaking -- and there’s no way Flint can’t feel it. But he keeps pressing a hand flat on Silver’s belly, directly over the stone. “I put Solomon out under the awning,” Flint goes on, voice no louder than the thunder rumbling in the distance. “I suppose we should see about building him a proper stable. I asked the boy if he’d be willing to come by and help me one day on it, maybe bring some of his friends, but he didn’t seem so keen on the idea, for some reason. I also saw most of the cats under the porch already, by the way, so they should be alright for the night. Don Pablos, I saw sleeping on our bed.”

Rain starts hitting the roof like echoes of cannon fire. It’s still afternoon, but the sky is as dark as night. Flint nips gently below his ear and says, “Dinner smells good.”

Silver can’t take it. He _can’t_. The wooden spoon slips from his fingers into the stew as he clutches at Flint’s arm. He’s unable to stop the shuddering sob that escapes him, near-silent and easily missed had Flint not been so sharply focused on him.

“What happened today?” Flint asks softly, clutching him closer. “You were fine when I woke up this morning. Was it church? Did I miss some--”

“No,” Silver says, sounding shaky even to himself. “Not...entirely. I just. I guess I got lost in my own head today. I can’t find my way out.”

Withdrawing his arms a little, Flint helps turn him around. It’s not easy, because of the crutch, but it gets him away from the fire. Flint keeps holding him close, urging his head to drop down on his shoulder, and says, “You were always a shit navigator. But that’s what I’m here for.”

It’s stupid. He’s done a lot worse things in his life than scare a 17-year old boy, and he knows he has nothing _real_ to worry about. But he finds himself muttering into Flint’s collarbone, “I’m never going to see you dance, am I?”

Flint stops rubbing down his spine and draws back a little. “Dance?” It’s the second time he’s said that today, and Silver can see him making the connection as clearly as he can see his own miserable self reflected in Flint’s eyes. But all Flint says, after a moment, “Never? Says who?”

Silver’s reflection just looks even more miserable. “I can’t dance,” he says. “And I can’t watch…” He can’t even say it out loud.

Flint eyes travel carefully all over his face, looking like he wants to stroke his beard but doesn’t want to take his hands off Silver. He squeezes him once before sliding one hand away from his back and grabbing Silver’s hand -- the one not holding his crutch. He laces their fingers together and holds them up in the air at shoulder level, his other hand still tight on his wrist.

Then he begins to sway. He says, “You’re Long John Silver and I’m Captain Fucking Flint. No one tells us what we can’t do.” 

Even through the stone encasing him, Silver manages a soft snort. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing,” Flint says, keeping his hold on Silver tight as he rocks them slowly back and forth. 

“This isn’t dancing,” Silver says.

“No,” Flint agrees. “But this is all I’ve ever been able to do. Miranda used to say it was ‘charming,’ which is how she described anything she found both endearing and pathetic. Thomas was far less polite about it.”

Unlike Reynaldo fucking Flint with his eyes, Flint talking about the Hamiltons never fills Silver with the same kind of ugly jealousy. Silver had never been nostalgic for his own youth. He’d never been filled with both fondness and sorrow over the passage of time, never yearned for a recent past. He’s seen other people feel this way, and he’s never understood it. But yet he feels it now, whenever Flint talks about his own history. He knows Flint is no longer suffering, that his daily life is filled with happiness, so stories of the Hamiltons only bring forth a kind of awful, yet peaceful ache. Sad for the absence, always, but Flint is finally letting himself remember the joyful times and actually remembering the joy. It’s a step forward, even if he doesn’t realize it, and every time he smiles at some recollection, Silver smiles too."What would he say?" Silver asks.

“He’d say he didn’t know the Royal Navy allowed men to serve if they had two left feet, and he no longer felt safe at the knowledge,” Flint says, adding a little bend at the waist with each sway. “Or that he was glad he never had to dance with me in public or else he’d pretend he didn’t know me, and that at least when we danced privately, I could be naked, and thank God I had other redeeming qualities, et cetera, et cetera. He really could go on sometimes. He would have liked you.”

Silver ducks his head so Flint can’t see his smile, but it’s fruitless, as Flint can probably feel it on his shoulder. They keep swaying before the fire. But then the silence threatens to creep into his heart again, all the day’s contemplations edging back into his mind, so he says, “There’s not even any music.”

So Flint begins to hum. It’s far better than his dancing, deep and lilting and on-key, a tune he’s making up entirely as he shuffles his feet around Silver’s stationary one. The hum rumbles out of his chest directly into Silver’s, and the rock inside him shakes and shatters. Along with the drops of rain, the crackle of the fire, and the claps of thunder, it almost sounds like a song.

Finally, Flint stops dancing them, but keeps humming as he touches Silver’s neck, making him look up. Flint kisses him right below his eye, and his song makes Silver’s eyelashes flutter.

“Being Long John Silver used to mean that hurting someone was the only thing I could do,” Silver says quickly, hushed. “And there’d been no one to tell me I couldn’t.”

Flint kisses him, and Silver immediately kisses back. He keeps his eyes half-opened, unable to stop looking at the freckles on Flint’s high cheekbones, the golden hue of his eyelashes, the furrow of his brow and the crinkle of his eyelids as he kisses Silver softly. It’s a kiss with no intention other than to calm, and it works. Flint opens his eyes, too, before pulling back, and if Silver can remember that shade of green exactly, he won’t have any trouble going to sleep tonight. Against his cheek, Flint says, “I guess now, being Long John Silver can mean dancing.” 

Then he adds, “And, shocking us all, it can mean cooking. I’m starving.”

Silver closes his eyes but contentedly, pushing Flint back with a huff, and Flint goes, but Silver can never push Flint away without pulling him back at least once. So he grabs him by the shirt and hauls him close for one more kiss.

“It’ll be ready in a bit,” Silver says eventually. He’s still pressed against Flint, and he’s suddenly a lot hungrier than he’d been before. “Although I don’t know how good it’ll taste. My heart wasn’t exactly in this one today.” 

Flint hands slips from his hair and rests on his neck again. “You heart is always there. I can always taste it.”

Silver doesn’t really know what that means, but he lets it go, turning back to the stew. Flint presses a wet, scratchy kiss on his neck before leaving him alone to finish up. Silver singes his fingers a little trying to fish the spoon out of the pot, but when he licks his fingers afterwards, he finds it doesn’t taste too bad.

“The leaks are all fixed,” Flint calls from the other room. “The boy did a good job.” After a moment, he wanders back into the kitchen. “Did you happen to get his name, by the way? I wasn’t paying attention when Lua introduced him, and then I couldn’t find a way to ask for it again."

Silver smiles crookedly, feeling the last pebble inside him crumble to dust. “What _were_ you paying attention to, then? It’s not like you were reflecting on this morning’s sermon.”

“You had just gotten up onto Solomon,” Flint explains, coming to stand by him. “You know how that distracts me.” He sticks his finger in the stew, not deterred in the slightest by the heat or by Silver slapping his hand with the spoon (a move he’d learned from Lua, though he was far less effective at it).

Flint just tastes the stew and grins around his finger. “ _There_ it is,” he says, going for another taste.

Inside their home is warm and dry, and Silver isn’t thinking anymore bad thoughts tonight. They'll come back, because they always do. But right now, he just has Flint’s song, wordless and soothing, playing over and over in his head. It’s so relentless, he starts to hum it, too.

Stirring their dinner, Silver begins to sway.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the file name for this doc is "reynaldo ain't shit"


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> life's a beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the wonderful beautiful tropical fish [sam](http://samhound.tumblr.com%22) who is too good to me
> 
> this is inspired by toby's forearms and those incredibly australian videos of luke naked on a beach
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> [best read with THIS playing in the background](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F-F8-qHmq0)  
> 

* * *

 

They set out just before the sun rises over his trees. Even though he hasn’t sailed in years, Flint can’t help but take note of the dawn’s color. It’s still calming, the soft blues and pale pinks, with no hint of red, that stretch away from the night. He sighs with relief looking at it, knowing every sailor awake at sea is sighing with him.

It’s a Saturday, but Silver has asked Lua for the whole day off. He’d also asked to borrow a cart, one they could attach to Solomon’s reins. Last night, Flint had stocked it with fresh water, bottles of rum, jerked lamb and pork, apples, garlic, lemons, onions, bread, tomatoes, corn, and, of course, oranges. They also brought some netting, a line, and bait, on the off chance one of them feels compelled to try and fish.

About a week ago, Flint had mentioned how he avoided the sea since living in St. Augustine. It’s not easy, the town being on the water, and an easterly wind will make the air still smell of salt even as far west as their home sits. He never goes to the docks to see the ships, and when he approaches the fort, he’s always able to keep the sea in his periphery. He wants it to sit at the edge of his sight like it sits at the edge of his mind.

When Silver asked why, Flint didn’t have a good answer. Or at least, not a current one. A reason aged six years that had calcified into habit, an unconscious impulse to avoid something that reminded him so strongly of what he’d needed to forget.

The admittance had been quiet, and so Silver’s response had been equally so — a pause and a measured hum that in retrospect should have given the whole plot away. No mention for a few days, and then Silver declared that he intended to fulfill an almost decade-long fantasy to fuck Flint on a seashore.

He’d said it like he’d been expecting Flint to hesitate, argue, or flat out reject the idea. Flint doesn’t fault him for it. But as soon as Silver had said he wanted to go, Flint’s immediate response was, only under the condition that they brought a tent to do it in, so as to avoid the sand.

Silver had packed the tent first, beneath the wine and the oranges.

They head northeast at dawn, away from the port. It would take them longer, and Flint knows Silver also snuck some weapons in the cart, in case they ran into anything unfriendly. He lets Silver lead Solomon to whatever secluded spot he had discovered through someone in the tavern. Flint normally wakes up early, but this is even earlier. Silver isn’t bothered by the hour, of course, and he makes no protest when Flint falls back asleep almost as soon as they set out, resting on Silver’s shoulder.

It’s not the sunlight on his eyelids that eventually wakes him up — though he’s certainly aware of it once sleep had shaken him loose. It’s the smell of brine and salt — of _sea_ — that tugs him from his dreams, far stronger than in town. In St. Augustine it clings to the wind as an absent lover. Here it embraces the air like a reunion. Smelling it like this is as though one of his dreams has been replaced by another, and when he finally opens his eyes, all he sees is blue.

Then he looks beyond Silver’s eyes and sees the sky, and below that, the sea. All this blue, in every corner, is clear and still and peaceful. At first it looks almost alien to him, unreal. Nothing but an oil painting or a tapestry hanging in the distance. Flint had thought seeing the ocean again might upkick something inside him, something dormant yet utterly, inherently violent. But seeing it now just makes the blood ebb and flow in his veins, moving the only way it knows how. It’s still as beautiful as he remembers.

“Thanks for joining us,” Silver says, mouth close to Flint’s ear. They’re idling on a sand dune, Solomon eating the tall wisps of grass at his feet. “The cart can’t move much further over this sand. And by that I mean, Solomon doesn’t have the energy to keep pulling it. You’ll have to get out and push if we want it closer to the water.”

Flint takes off his hat, scratches his hair, trying to absorb his words. It’s difficult. Parts of him are still asleep, and he’s look at something that has haunted his reveries for almost seven years.

But the same could be said for Silver, and it hadn’t taken him more than a few moments to get used to seeing him again: remarkably different and wholly unchanged, passed out  in his only chair. Flint supposes, if you dream about something long enough, there’s no way it can ever surprise you.

“I’m not pushing you, too,” he says, stretching until he hears his back crack. “And undo Solomon as well. I’m not pushing him either.”

“Certainly,” Silver says, sticking his crutch into the sand and launching himself out. “I’ve been leading horses to water for years.”

Flint knows Silver is setting him up, but he still says anyway, “Have you lead any _mules?_ ”

“Hey!” Silver says on cue, giving Solomon a heavy, dusty pat on the rear. “I thought we agreed never to use that word in front of him!”

Like a dance, Flint rolls his eyes and gives Solomon a customary glare. Solomon knows his part well: he ignores everything they say and do. Flint puts his hat back on and takes off his jacket. He gets out to push.

Not too close to the water, he sets up the tent by himself, but he slept the whole way here so he doesn’t mind. Even if Silver had no plans to fuck him, the tent had been a good idea. The sun is relentless, even so early in the day, and there isn’t a single cloud to provide any relief.

Silver digs a stake to keep Solomon, theoretically, tied up, and gives him some fresh water to drink before heading down to the shore. Flint puts up the tent as quick as he can, but by the time it’s steady and he’s able to head to the water, all he finds is a pile of clothes, a single boot, and a crutch.

The sun shines brightly over the waves, and it takes Flint a moment to spy Silver, floating easily in a gentle bob, hands resting behind his head. Flint strips down quickly and doesn’t even give himself a moment to savor the feel of sand beneath his feet as he wades in.

It’s shallow enough to stand beside Silver’s body and have him come up to his stomach, so Flint stands over him, blocking the sun from Silver’s face. As soon as he’s shaded, Silver opens his eyes, squints up at him, and that’s all he needs to do for Flint to give in and kiss him.

The waves try to push them apart, together, apart, together — but their hands and their will have always been a fair match against nature itself.

Finally, the coolness of the water around his legs against the heat of the sun on his dry back is too much for Flint to stand, so he breaks away from Silver to get more wet. Silver still looks content.His tanned skin looks brown and dreamy beneath the green sea, wavering like the sand beneath him.

“How did you get out here without the crutch?” Flint asks. “I didn’t see.”

“Awkwardly,” Silver says with a shrug. “I’ll need your help getting out again.”

Flint tangles his fingers in Silver’s hair, spreading out beneath his head like seaweed. He can feel his own paler shoulders already beginning to burn. He can taste salt from Silver’s tongue. Silver asks, “Is it as you remembered it?”

Flint had loved the sea, and so he’d joined the British Navy. Then, he’d hated it, for pulling him away from the Hamiltons, from his chance at happiness and love. Then, he’d loved it, for giving him a renewed purpose, for giving him a cause, for giving him his path to vengeance. Then, he’d hated it, for turning him into a monster, for turning him into a murky and unknowable thing, his heart beaten beneath unforgivable waves.

“No,” says Flint. “Not really.”

Silver’s smile rises up like the tide, not caring at all for the salt water splashing into his mouth. He says, “Do you remember the first time you chased me?”

Flint starts to say, _every night_ — but Silver has taken off before he can even open his mouth, rolling over and swimming away much faster than one might expect from a one-legged man.

He takes a moment to appreciate Silver’s arms cutting through the water before diving after him.

They don’t swim out too far, needing to keep an eye on their belongings, although by design there isn’t another soul around for miles. Flint catches him by the foot and pulls him back, and he can’t keep his eyes open for long under water, but they don’t need to see in order to find each other. They’re still closed when Silver kisses him, biting his lips as they breach the surface.

They’re far enough out to where they can stand with their shoulders submerged, breathing hard and grinning stupidly at each other, still holding onto each other. Silver wavers a little more, obviously, but he’s still able to stand upright in the water. And then he wraps his leg around Flint’s waist, kissing him hard and then slipping out his arms, diving under and popping up behind Flint like a child.

“I thought you hated the ocean,” Flint says, giving him a good splash.

“I do,” Silver says. Then he corrects himself. “I did. I hate it out _there_.” He points to the horizon, where the world curves. Where the water turns black with distance and where anything might be lurking. “But this is… this is something else. This is less, and more. I can be something I never thought I’d ever be again.”

“What’s that?” Flint asks.

“Graceful,” says Silver.

Flint remembers the first time he swam with Silver, as sure as he remembers the first time he chased him. He remembers the piercing sting of the water against his many wounds, the freezing slice of the water through his clothes, the beat of the waves hitting them as they crashed against the bottom of the immense fucking warship. Looking back, he doesn’t know how he’d lived with so much rage inside him. How he’d been able to walk, to sleep, to eat, to breathe. He doesn’t know how he’d been able to ever open his mouth without screaming. A part of him doesn’t believe these are the same waters they’d been in all those years ago. They’d both been so incomplete back then, without even knowing. They’d been so young, so foolish, and so selfish. Now they were old, foolish, and selfish, but it’s the same men, the same ocean. Just no warship in sight.

Flint presses himself against Silver, feeling all of him hard and warm and slippery. He kisses him, but he’s already thinking about the next time he’ll kiss him, and the one after that, too. How he has to find other places, places closer to home, places more public unfortunately, but ones where Silver can swim whenever he wants.

Silver jerks up into his hand as Flint closes around his cock. The water’s a little too cold to do much, but he doesn’t move far when he breaks away from Flint’s mouth with a gasp.

“No,” he breathes, digging his nails into Flint’s arms. “We have to fuck in the tent. This is very important to me.”

Something about his words, the phrasing, makes Flint pause. He tilts back to better see Silver’s face, holding him at arm’s length now. 

“Please tell me I didn’t just set up a _fuck tent_.”

“You’re goddamned right you just set up a fuck tent,” says Silver. “I told you this was a day of actualizing fantasties. Now I just need you to come over with a bloody meat cleaver.”

“I’m sure I can arrange that,” Flint says, placing both hands on Silver’s shoulders and pushing him all the way under.

For all his talk about fucking Flint, Silver stays in the water most of the day. Flint gets in and out a few times, and drips in the tent as he watches Silver swim back and forth, and float around, and dive under for too long, making Flint’s heart lurch every time, before popping up with a dumb smile and his hair all in his face.

Eventually, he asks for help getting out, and when Flint tugs him out and helps him dry off with his shirt, he collapses in the tent without another word. Except to give Flint a handful of shells he’d collected.

Silver then sleeps for most of the day. Fortunately, Flint knows Silver inside and out, and so he’d prepared for this by bringing along a couple books.

The sun’s lowering behind them when Silver wakes up with an, “ _Oh, noooooo._ ”

But Flint’s prepared for that, too, dropping his book in an instant and climbing on top of him. They’re both still naked, and Flint presses down hard on his ribs. Silver’s pout disappears immediately.

“I didn’t mean to sleep,” he says, running his hands up Flint’s arms.

“You never do,” Flint points out. “I didn’t mind. You tired yourself out so in the water, I wasn’t sure I’d be in for a good time anyway.”

Flint leans over and grabs a loaf of bread and some fruit. He tears into everything over Silver, littering his chest with crumbs and juice, but he doesn’t protest when Flint starts feeding him piece by piece. Silver spends so much of his life insisting that he doesn’t need taking care of, so these few opportunities where he’s being lazy and slow and pliant feel like luxuries to Flint.

Silver sits up, cupping Flint’s back with one hand to keep him steady while he drinks some rum to wash down his late lunch. And since he’s already up there, he mightas well kiss Flint too, giving him the last drops of his liquor from his tongue.

“I’m no longer tired,” Silver says, pressing up to show Flint exactly what parts of him are awake.

“Are you sure?” Flint asks, biting his ear. “I found ways to keep myself occupied while you slept.” He smiles as Silver’s hands make their way to ass, and find the oil already dripping from him, and he smiles wider when Silver realizes with a long groan, clutching him tighter. He’d grown tired of his books.

“How _could_ you,” Silver moans into his shoulder, edging a fingertip into Flint’s hole. “All while I _slept_ , unaware.”

Flint makes sure his hand is free of sand, slicks it with more oil as calmly as he can under Silver’s attention, and grabs his cock. He pushes back onto Silver’s finger and says, “You want me like one of those girls in Nassau, right? They know how to prepare themselves.”

Silver groans as he strokes him firmly, familiar. Flint’s wrist grazes his own cock with each pass, just a tease, but along with Silver starting to fuck him with his fingers, is enough to send him close to the edge.

“Wait,” Flint says, once Silver starts moving like he’s ready to live out his deepest dreams. He delicately slides off Silver’s lap. “Can you spin around? I want to see —”

Silver is already smiling, turning so his head rests at the entrance of the tent instead. In the process, he kicks Flint in the leg hard, and gets sand in his own face, but he stretches out on the ground like a sated tiger, all teeth and brown skin. He might not be graceful out of the water, but to Flint he is still full of grace. He says, “Now will you stop teasing me about my fantasies?”

“No,” Flint says, grabbing Silver’s cock again as he straddles his thighs. “I just want to make sure you get your money’s worth.”

They work together, and his eyes fall shut as Silver finally breaches him. Without his sight, all he can do is feel the slow, pleasing ache fill him. He can only hear his own harsh pants, Silver’s breathy gasps, the call of gulls swooping overhead, the breeze whipping at the tent walls, and the rhythmic water beating the shore.

He holds onto Silver’s sides for balance as he lowers himself on his cock. And when he’s finally back to his body enough to open his eyes again, he’s got the whole world out in front of him. His past, his present, his future. There in front of him is every course he’s ever chartered to lead him to this moment, and the assurance that any move he’d make again will wind up back here, too.

The sea is a little darker now in the afternoon light. A little choppier. Silver sits up on his elbows, slick chest rising and falling, his hair falling back over his shoulders. He peers up at Flint and says, “You gonna show me what all the fuss over a fuck tent was about?”

Flint kisses him once, soft, before sitting up straight and getting to work. He’d never visited the girls in Nassau but he understands how they operated: ride ‘em hard and slow, and keep ‘em coming back for more. He clenches around Silver’s cock with every uptick of his hips, grinds and lingers whenever he sits full back down. He takes his time.

He can’t control Silver’s movements, but he seems good with the pace, hands gripping tightly into Flint’s ass and jerking up with shallow, unhurried thrusts. He’s loud when they’re fast and quiet when they’re slow, and right now he’s beyond words. His head is thrown back with silent moans, his eyes wide and looking lost, trained on the ocean high up in his vision like a rolling sky.

Their breathing synchronizes with the crush of the waves and with the pounding of his own heart. He can move easier sitting upright but he’s too far from Silver, so it’s really no contest. He lies down fully on top, going for the long line of Silver’s throat.

Silver’s knees dig into him, hands clutching desperately at his head to keep his teeth firmly in his neck. He starts fucking up into him harder than before, frantic, like a cloud bursting with rain.

“ _Yes_ ,” is the only word he’s able to say, hips moving wildly beneath Flint. “ _Yes._ ” It’s a question and an answer and an acceptance and a prayer. It’s a cheer of victory, a hushed confession. “ _Yes_ ,” Silver says, pulling Flint’s hair until he stops sucking on his neck — so he might start sucking his lips instead. Flint hasn’t asked him anything, but Silver’s response will always, always, be _yes._

It will always be yes with an additional touch, and Flint groans as Silver gets his slick hand around his cock. Their bodies are so warm from the sun, the humidity thick inside their tent, and when Silver comes inside him, it’s an unimaginable perfect heat.

Silver shudders through it, face buried in Flint’s neck. Flint stops moving to hold him, his own cock still trapped in Silver’s hand, flushed between them. The sweat, the twitch of Silver’s stomach as he tries to breathe right is stimulating enough.

But then Silver finally leans back and starts tugging at Flint’s thighs. His eyes are as wild and wet as the sea behind him.

“Come on,” he says softly, roughly, as Flint slides off his cock and inches up his chest. “Don’t act like you never thought about doing _this_ back at that beach, too. Just pretend my hair is shorter, and don’t look behind you.”

Flint stops moving before Silver’s mouth reaches the red tip of his cock. Instead, he thumbs at his chin, pulling at his pink bottom lip and holding him open. He says, “There’s not a part of you I don’t like looking at.”

The sun hadn’t made Silver’s skin truly flush. Neither had fucking Flint. But that and the way Flint _looks_ at him makes him glance away, the tips of his ears tinged with heat.

Flint takes this opportunity to slip his cock into Silver’s open mouth.

Silver goes from shy to coy with a single flutter of his eyelashes, his fingers immediately finding his stretched hole and pressing in.

And then it’s all white hot wetness and suction, pulling him under like a riptide. He keeps his own pace the same, fucking Silver’s mouth and fucking back on his fingers slowly and deeply. But while Silver had been content with that speed before, his tongue has never been slow in as long as Flint has known him. He’s hard and unyielding around his cock, urging Flint on with each undulation and measured moan, spit sliding down his throat. Flint can’t stop watching him, but when he comes, it’s with his hands fisted in the sand above his head.

When he finally collapses next to Silver, he lands with his head out the tent. Sand quickly sticks to the sweat on his face, but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind at all. He gets more sand in Silver’s hair too, as he brushes it back, but Silver also looks fine with it. They listen to the sound of the ocean for awhile.

He thinks Silver might have dozed off again, so he says, “How did we deserve to be this happy?”

The waves continue to beat. Silver says, his breath hot on Flint’s chest, “Maybe we don’t deserve it. But some fool bastard out there must have made the mistake of letting us be happy, so we better not fuck it up.”

Then he says, “Solomon hasn’t run off, has he?”

Solomon is folded up in the shade of the tent, either fast asleep or dead. Flint has to watch him for almost thirty seconds before he sees a sign of life — a grumbled snore and a heaved sigh.

“Can’t be bothered to,” Flint says. “It’s that kind of day.”

Silver sits up slowly, his spine cracking as he stretches to the basket of food. They eat most of it, tossing Solomon some of their apples, which he doesn’t even rise to eat in singular bites.

“Let’s go have a wash,” Silver says, reaching for his crutch. “We must do this more often. What an idiot I am for never correlating your exposure to the sun with the innumerable increase of your freckles. When we get home I’m hiding all your shirts.”

They tread back to the waters, naked, arms around shoulders, itching with sand, sticky with sweat, salt in their eyes, burns on their skin, swell to their lips, thirst on their tongue, love in their hearts, sun on their backs, sea on their minds, each other in their hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silver in the water is inspired by my hero, Kurt Vonnegut, who describes himself and also me thusly:
> 
> "I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.”
> 
> (except I'm only 5'5)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey, this one has a plot!
> 
> here it is: Lua needs a favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH BOY okay, i'm taking away the "?" in the chapters, because i'm taking a hiatus from fic writing for the time being. i'm going to work on some of my own writing instead. i know no one else makes a big deal about this sort of thing, fandoms are transient, etc etc but this show, this fandom, and these stories changed my life and i'm so fucking stupidly sentimental over all my shit god. 
> 
> none of these chapters ever end on a cliffhanger, they're all pretty self-sustaining stories. i guess taking away the ? is more about my closure than anything else. not that there's really closure here. especially with this story, here -- these idiots will always exist forever in this place, and nothing will ever change that.
> 
> god i'm sorry, this is stupid, why do things have to matter all the time, just enjoy the oranges, i love you

* * *

 

 

Flint dreams he’s walking down a cobblestone street, somewhere in the heart of a city. Everything is gray, and he’s alone. The buildings on all sides of him shift and sway like ships rocked by waves, moving together to a breeze he can’t feel. He’s walking, his toes curling and catching on the edges of the smooth stones. He’s walking towards a person at the end of his path, a person with his back to Flint. He’s walking, but he’s not getting any closer. The figure starts to turn. They’re turning for a lifetime and Flint is suddenly afraid of what will happen when the person turns to face him, so he speeds up to a run, and the person keeps turning, and he’s no closer, and a warm voice in his ear says, “ _Flint._ ”

He wakes with a start to darkness. He’s on his belly, which presses his thudding heart deeper into his chest. It sticks in his throat like an apple core. Someone is half-draped over his shoulder and Flint’s hand is already curled into a fist, ready to throw, when Silver murmurs, “Flint. I’m cold.”

Flint stays unmoving for a second before letting out a long, loud breath. Otherwise he doesn’t move. “It’s December.”

“But why am I cold?” Silver asks.

Flint looks at him over his shoulder, even though it’s the middle of the night and there’s no light to see anything or anyone. He can feel Silver’s gaze on him just the same. “It’s winter.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Silver mumbles, “But why am I _cold?_ ” He sounds like he’s lost about three decades in the night.

Truthfully, it is unusually chilly. They get about a few weeks of cold weather in St. Augustine, evenly spaced throughout the winter months. This is, apparently, the first night of such.

“Because you usually kick all the blankets away from yourself in the night to smother me with instead,” Flint says.

Silver says nothing, but Flint can feel him staring. Then, faintly, he feels the bed tremble.

“Christ,” he says under his breath, rolling over completely to face him. “Turn around, get under here.” Because Silver can tell Flint to fuck him hard enough to forget all about the idea of God, but asking to be held is something that apparently has to go unsaid.

Silver turns over wordlessly, lying back down. Flint covers him with himself, and then their blanket. They’re both still naked from earlier, and Silver’s back is chilled against Flint’s chest. Usually Silver runs too hot for them to sleep like this. They’ll start out this way, but in the night they drift apart until it’s only Silver’s hand is resting on him in the morning, or his foot is curling around his ankle, or he’s using Flint’s armpit for a pillow. Flint keeps pretty still when he sleeps, and he’s unbothered by however Silver needs to be comfortable.

He wraps his arm under Silver’s, his hand tucking under his neck. “Think warm thoughts,” he whispers, smiling into his ear.

But Silver has gone boneless beside him, his breathing evening out instantly as falls back to sleep. Flint shakes his head, kisses the nape of Silver’s neck, and then he drifts off, too.

He can’t remember what he dreams.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Flint peels himself off Silver’s back, puts on some trousers and a shirt from the floor, lights a fire in the kitchen, heads outside to make sure Solomon hasn’t come loose in the night and wandered off, gives him some breakfast, takes down the laundry hanging up from yesterday, which is a little stiff from the cold, heads down into the cellar, trips over a couple cats as he does so, grabs some grain for porridge and some cheese and apples from their stock, pulls a couple buckets of water from the well to make tea, lugs them inside, goes back into the bedroom, and sits down on the bed to put his boots on.

“You can’t stay in bed all day,” he says.

Silver is just two eyes glaring at him from a curled mass of blanket. “Yes I can.”

“You need to go to work.” He stretches out his hands, which are cold and stiff from the well water and don’t want to work on his laces. “You always complain about how hot the kitchens are, think of how nice they’ll be today.”

Silver thinks about it. He moves the blanket so his mouth is free. “But I have to walk outside to get there.”

“It’s going to warm up as the day grows,” Flint says. “I’ll let you wear my jacket today.”

“It’s too tight in the shoulders,” Silver says, but he wraps the blanket tighter around himself in a way that makes Flint think he’s already wearing it.

He smiles down at his boots. “Well, we can’t all be broad, strapping young men.”

Silver doesn’t say anything for a long moment while Flint fights with his laces, and then he says, softly, slowly, “When you lived in England, did you ever have to sleep outside?”

He looks at Silver. He has never had to sleep outside that he can recall. He went from his grandfather’s house to the Navy barracks to ships to a small apartment in London to more ships to the house in Nassau to the _Walrus_ to here. He’s always had walls to protect him from wind, roofs to stop the rain, fires to soften his bones.  He doesn’t think Silver had lived a long part of his life in England. It would have been a very long time ago when he did.

“Nevermind,” Silver mutters quickly, looking away from Flint’s face. “I was just… Nevermind.”

Flint leans down and kisses him. Silver responds immediately — for a second. Then he turns away suddenly so Flint’s lips are against his chin.

“No,” he says. “Don’t. I don’t want you kiss me like that, out of pity.”

Flint doesn’t move right away, and when he does, it’s to keep kissing him. He stays where he is, kissing along his jaw through his beard. “I’m not,” he says, lips against his chin, as he moves up his cheek. “I’m kissing you —” he kisses under Silver’s eyes, which are closed, “to distract you —” he kisses against the corner of Silver’s lips, “from when I do this.” And then he presses his ice-cold hand against Silver’s neck.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Silver jerks away from him, all the way across the other side of the bed, almost falling off. He throws a pillow at Flint. “You son of a _bitch!_ ”

Flint’s on his feet and out the door, laughing, because Silver might have one leg but he’s _fast_ when he’s angry, and of course he is because Flint taught him to be fast always. He somehow manages to get untangled from the blanket and grab his crutch to be right on Flint’s heels as he chases him through the house, yelling after him.

“You're a goddamned evil, awful, rat fucking _bastard_ , Captain fucking  _Flint_!” Silver shouts, stomping after him through the kitchen. He tosses a book but Flint is able to dodge it, still laughing as he heads quickly to the front door. “I ought to throw you down that damn well where it’s _black_ and _cold_ like your rotten _heart_ —!”

He runs into Flint’s back, but Flint doesn’t move.

Because Flint has stopped moving.

Because Lua is standing on their porch, listening to Silver curse Flint.

In English.

They stare at each other for what feels like a long time. Flint wants to check to see if Silver put on clothes this morning but he’s afraid of what will happen if he looks away from Lua. She’s watching them with an unreadable expression on her face, wrapped up in a colorful red shawl that covers the lower half of her face. She’s glaring, but she kind of always is, so that’s no help. He desperately tries to think of something to say.

“Lua...” Silver says eventually, moving to Flint’s side. He puts his hand on his hip. “.... _Hola_.”

Flint closes his eyes. He desperately tries to think of something to say, other than that.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Lua says angrily, before nudging her way inside. “I’d ask where you learned your manners, but I think I just figured it out.”

 

* * *

 

Silver is, thankfully, wearing trousers. He’s also wearing Flint’s jacket, and nothing else underneath. Which is a look Flint might enjoy, if Señora Lua Cristina Alvarado hadn’t been sitting in their kitchen, mentally critiquing every part of their home.

Flint busies himself making tea. The table only has two chairs. He only has two teacups. He wonders if he can just leave Silver to squirm their way out of this while he went out into the grove. It had been such a relief, when Silver had begun acting as his Quartermaster, and he didn’t have to talk to the crew as much anymore. Hal had been good at his job, but he hadn’t been nearly as _distracting_ as Silver is, and he hadn’t been nearly as comfortable at lying.

“It’s cleaner than I was expecting,” Lua finally says. “Without a woman around, I was expecting a pig-sty.”

“Thanks,” Flint says, and hopes to God she doesn’t want a tour of the place. There’s no non-sodomy reason for only one bed after living together this long.

“What are you doing here, Lua?” Silver crosses his arms, and Flint’s a little surprised to see he seems genuinely mad. “You once told me, to my _face_ , that there should be an eleventh commandment against unannounced house guests.”

Lua frowns at him for a moment before looking away. She stares out the window, at the cat on the sill cleaning its face, at the cold gray sky. “I need your help,” she says. “It’s my son.”

“Which one?” Silver asks. “Pedro?”

“No,” Lua says. “It’s Tony, my oldest.”

“The accountant?”

It hits Flint every now and again, that Silver has relationships with people who aren’t him. Relationships Flint isn’t privy to. Not that they keep secrets, but because they aren’t about to go recounting every detail of every conversation they’ve had at the end of each day. But Flint’s work is more solitary, by his own design. Even the people he encounters daily, he can’t call what he has with them a relationship. A passing acquaintance, if he was ever pressed to describe it. But Silver, despite his dislike of most people, still bothers to _know_ them. Still speaks with them and can reference things from previous conversations with them that Flint doesn’t know anything about. It’s Silver’s survival instinct, to know people, but Flint survives better without them. He knows he’s the most important person in Silver’s life, but he also knows he isn’t the _only_ person in Silver’s life. But Flint’s okay with that. Silver  _is_ the only person in _his_ life and that’s all he really cares about.

To Flint, Lua says, “He lives by the sea, he’s an accountant for one of the shipping companies that docks there. He’s a _good_ boy, a smart boy. Late last night, I get a messenger from Josefina, his wife. She says a man arrived on a ship and says he is a debt collector. He says my Nico owed money back in Spain and he has come to collect it from Tony!”

The water starts to boil, so Flint removes it from the fire and slowly pours it into the teapot. Silver says, “Okay…”

Lua slaps her hand down on the table, making the teacups rattle. “It’s a lie! Nico never borrowed any money from anyone, that’s why we never _had_ any money! But he is saying he’ll throw Tony in jail if he doesn’t pay. Tony is a _good_ boy, Josefina is pregnant with my first grandchild. He can’t —”

“Lua,” Silver says, and he unfolds his arms. He speaks gently, because Lua has been working herself up for a while now and it’s alarming. Flint has not once ever seen her this flustered. “It’s alright. If he’s lying, he has no grounds to make due on his threat of prison. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Lua turns away, her face ashen. “Josefina said….the man had papers…” She looks back fiercely, teeth clenched. “It’s a _lie!_ Nico never borrowed money, and anyway he died almost ten years ago! His family is very well-known in Sevilla, it would have been easy for this man to come up with this ruse, thinking we have the kind of money Nico’s family has. But it’s not _true_.”

Lua is only about five feet tall, her tightly bound hair streaked with white, her hands nicked and scarred from a long life of work, but she’s sturdy as all hell and angry enough now to bring the whole house down around her. Flint pours her some tea.

“How can we help?” he asks, giving Silver some tea for lack of anything else to do. He goes to stand behind him, leaning on the kitchen counter.

“I’m sure the man wants more than what we can afford,” Silver says quickly, loudly, as though to speak over the absurd amount of gold buried in the cellar. “We’re only humble farmers, after all.”

All at once, the fervor seems to die in Lua, and her shoulders slouch as she can’t meet their eyes. For a moment Flint thinks she really did come here to ask them for money, which is a ridiculous notion because she knows how much she pays Silver, but then she asks, “Do you remember that night you threw those men out the window?”

It takes Flint a second to remember. He doesn’t think of it as that night they threw a man out the window of El Taberna del Caballo. He thinks of it as the first night he got to smell Silver’s skin up close. The first night he got to touch the small of Silver’s back with both hands. The night he got to sink back into himself for the first time in a very, very long time. The first night he slept well in over a decade, with the weight of another man with him.

“Yes,” says Silver evenly. “What about it?”

Lua doesn’t say anything, and suddenly Flint realizes what she’s asking.

“ _Lua_ ,” he says, because she won’t even let people arm wrestle in the taberna. For all her aggressive personality, she dislikes even the hint of violence. The only reason they’d been allowed back into her place after that night had been because they’d been defending her daughter, and even then, no one had ever dared to bring the incident back up, not even Lily.

“I don’t know if you know,” Lua says lowly, almost to herself, “what you both looked like, that night.” She turns back to them, her gaze piercing and bright. “You looked the _same_. You did something horrible, you were so _brutal_ , and you never wavered. You never gave it a second’s thought, that this was something you maybe shouldn’t do. Those men — they deserved to be removed from my place, away from Lily, but what you _did_ — and it wasn’t even strange for you, was it? You looked the _same_. Like it was something… something you did all the time. Or. Something you used to do, maybe.”

The cat steps off the windowsill onto the counter. It brushes up against Flint’s arm, rubbing its face into his knuckles. He’s never been thankful for a cat, but this is the only time he’s had them in his life. This is the only place. It helps him know where he is.

He’s behind Silver so he can’t see his face, but he can see the stiffness of his back, the way his hand is clenched white on his crutch, the way he sits so still as he watches Lua, the steam rising from his tea over his shoulder.

“Why are you here, Lua?” Silver asks again softly, but no less dangerously. “With this, I’m afraid you’re going to have to say it. Because you aren’t talking about throwing someone out a window.”

“You’re both good boys,” Lua says, and like everything else she says, she means it. “I know you are good boys, even if you do… strange things sometimes. I just want my family to be left alone. I just want them to be safe. I want this man to be _gone_.”

Silver waits for more, but Lua just keeps her head down, rubbing her palm with her thumb. With a sigh, he gets up from the table to stand with Flint. He keeps his back to her and stares out the window, deep in thought.

Finally, he looks over to Flint.

They’ve developed a way of speaking when they couldn’t talk out loud. Flint supposes it’s one of the _strange things_ they did. It had started back before Flint died, when they were all at war and the need for secrecy had been paramount. Now, they had other things to say, better things, that they aren’t allowed to say where others might hear. He and Silver have never been quiet men, but now there’s never a silent moment between them.

Flint folds his arms and cocks his eyebrows as though to say, _So what do you want to do?_

Silver grimaces, his eyes darting quickly back to the window before looking back at Flint in a way that says, _We don’t really have a choice. Do we?_

Flint rubs his beard with the back of his hand, squinting at him. _How should we go about this then?_

Silver rolls his shoulders, agitated, and jerks his chin at Flint before facing away. _You are more than welcome to take the lead here_.

Flint pushes himself off the counter and approaches the table. For a moment, Lua looks small.

He reaches for the cup of tea he’d poured for Silver. “Send a message to your son,” he says. “Tell him to say he doesn’t have the money — but!” He stops Lua from interrupting. She sinks into her chair, glowering a little. “Tell him to say he has to borrow it from you. The man won’t let him journey alone.”

Lua takes this in silently, looking as serious as she does every Sunday morning. “You want him to come _here?_ ”

There are more guards by the waters. And Flint knows places to hide things here.

But Silver says, “We don’t want to catch any unwanted attention. We’re _strange_ , after all. And there’s nothing stranger than a stranger. It’s better if he comes to us.”

Lua leaves to go send the message. She doesn’t exactly say thank you, but when Flint sees her out, she cups his cheek silently, something she’s never done before. It’s so shockingly maternal that Flint feels like he’s fallen through thin ice into a dark lake. That’s never happened to him either, and the idea of it is just as foreign and terrifying. He needs several minutes before he can pry himself away from the door.

Silver is gone from the kitchen, so Flint finishes putting on his boots and heads out into the grove. He’s picking up one of his barrels when he sees SIlver, standing beneath the trees. He’s holding a white orange blossom with both hands, deep in thought as he rubs a petal between two fingertips. He’s still wearing Flint’s coat.

Flint looks over his shoulder, just to make sure they’re _actually_ alone now before moving Silver’s hair to one shoulder and kissing his neck. Silver doesn’t say anything, but he stops pulling at the flower so hard.

With as little words as possible, they come up with a plan for the debt collector. Well, Flint does. Silver mostly just agrees, with only a couple of suggestions as he watches Flint’s feet on the ladder where he’s picking this morning’s oranges. Flint is almost tempted to offer to do this alone, but it would be a wasted breath.

It’s a straightforward plan, though, and once it’s settled, they’re on their way to work, and they can’t really think of anything else to talk about. All they can say with their bodies now is _I don’t want to speak right now._

Flint isn’t so sure what, exactly, has Silver so clammed up, but for him, the intrusion of another person into their space has effectively frozen him. Lua hadn’t been their first visitor, and she likely won’t be the last, but he feels exposed anyway. He feels _seen_ , and even if by a person he considers a friend, sort of, it disrupts him for the rest of the day. Strangely, contemplating the murder almost helps him return to normal.

Except after dinner, when Silver had been cleaning in the kitchens, and Flint had been reading quietly, waiting for him to finish so they could leave, and Lua had been silent, white, wiping down the same table for almost twenty minutes. Flint finds he’s almost ready to speak again, and that’s when a young man bursts into the taberna. He hands Lua a piece of paper breathlessly before departing with equal haste.

Lua reads it and then stares at it for a long time before she meets Flint’s gaze for the first time tonight. Then she disappears into the back without a word. Flint is about to follow her when Silver comes out instead. His face is pinched, and he’s already wearing Flint’s coat as he slaps his apron down on the bar. When he passes Flint, all he says is, “Tomorrow.” And then Flint can’t think of anything else he needs to add to that.

Until they’re back at home.

As soon as Flint closes the door behind them, it’s like all the air has returned once more to the room. In a blink, they’re in bed, and they don’t even have the energy to light a fire, even though the room is as cold as last night. Silver’s wearing one of Flint’s nightshirts, but they’re so distracted by the day’s events, neither of them can enjoy it at _all_ , which is possibly the real crime in all this.

Silver is collapsed on top of him, trying to soak in all of Flint’s body heat like a sponge. His face is firmly planted in Flint’s neck, but he can tell he’s not asleep yet.

“We could go, you know,” Flint murmurs, which is the first thing he’s said tonight. “We can pick up and leave tonight, and be miles from here by sun up. We don’t have to do this.”

Silver breathes heavily into him, his whole body loosening up over him. Flint cups his ass to keep him firm against him, because he’s maybe enjoying the nightshirt a bit.

“No,” Silver says, not moving from Flint’s neck. “We’re not going anywhere. This is our home. And we don’t _run_.”

“What? Yeah we do. We run all the time. Silver, we ran _here._ ”

Silver’s legs tighten around his waist, which is the only indication that he’s about to move, but suddenly Flint’s back is cold and Silver is now using him as a blanket. Flint manages to pry a hand loose from under Silver’s ass in order to pull the actual quilt over them, and Silver rumbles with contentment.

“Fine,” he says into Flint’s skin. “We run sometimes. But we’re not leaving. This is our _home_.”

Something inside Flint untangles at that, because yes, he’s not above running and leaving and going so far as to fake his own death to avoid his problems, but he doesn’t want to do that here. This house, this life — it’s not a _problem_. It’s the only solution he’s ever found.

“Besides, I actually want to….” Silver trails off slowly, sounding unsure, “... _help_ Lua? More… more than I want to… help myself?” He finally untucks from Flint’s neck to stare at him, brow furrowed in honest confusion. “Am I making _any_ sense?”

Flint hasn’t thought about killing in a long time. Not in a serious way. Even the ghosts who used to come to him at night have faded into the shadows of their unlit bedroom — there’s no escaping them, but there’s nothing he can do about it, and he’s too comfortable to try and light a candle. He knows he’ll be punished for all his multitude of sins one day, when he’s finally put down. But right now, in his life, he has found a kind of miraculous peace that’s his and his alone. Those ghosts, he can worry about later, when he’s a dying man. He doesn’t need to think about killing all that much anymore.

Except for moments like now, with Silver lit only by heavy moonlight streaming through the window, looking up at him with warm if frustrated blue eyes, scratching softly as Flint’s scalp behind his ears. In moments like this, Flint would freely and gladly kill anyone who tried to get in between them, without a second thought. Never let it be said that Flint is not a man who doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

He smiles. “None at all,” he says, and kisses away the crease between Silver’s eyes. He stays there for a minute longer, stealing back some of his body heat, before he says, “Now would you rather be smothered to death in the night by my full weight on you, or be a little cold?”

Silver thinks about it for a long time.

Eventually Flint shifts so that he’s pressed against most of Silver without the risk of death. He’s about to wrap his arm around him when Silver grabs his wrists and sticks it under the nightshirt, so his palm is resting against Silver’s soft ribcage. That seems to be all Silver wants tonight, and Flint is happy to press all of the heat he has right into that spot for him.

Silver drifts off without another single shiver.

 

* * *

 

The walk to the taberna the next day is just as silent, but Silver seems more concerned with staying warm than what they had to do that night. He’s got his arms wrapped around Solomon’s neck as they walk. The sky is clear today, and unlike Silver apparently, Flint actually feels warm with the sun beating down on him. The chill only comes when the wind blows.

Unsettlement covers Flint like a shroud as he watches Silver pry himself off Solomon’s back and tie him up behind the taberna this time instead of out front. He says, “I’ll be quick as I’m able today.”

Silver smiles. “No stopping to watch the sunset.” He checks to make sure they’re alone, and then reaches out to rub the gray patch in Flint’s beard with his thumb, right near his mouth. “No matter how beautiful it is today.”

Flint looks down, so Silver’s thumb is against his bottom lip. This whole damn thing feels much worse than their old horrors. He can’t recall ever doing anything so premeditated. It’s like all the guilt he usually has afterwards is hitting him before, like a ship creaking before the canons hit it.

Silver bows his head towards him, so they’re both looking at his thumb on Flint’s lip. “Afterwards,” he says quietly, and drags his hand away slowly, “when we’re back home, you’re going to fuck me so hard and so deep, so I can feel the heat from your come warming me up all through the night.”

Flint looks up. Silver is still smiling, the wind blowing a few strands of hair into his eyes. “There,” he says. “That’s something better for you to look forward to tonight, isn’t it?”

Flint lets out a long breath, shaking his head. “You’re such an asshole.”

Silver heads up the backstairs. “Don’t be late,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Flint isn’t late.

He sits at his table in the back, by the kitchen. He eats. He has a book out, but he doesn’t read.

It’s a quiet night, though he doubts that’s anything more than coincidence and the cold keeping most people in their homes. It’s like the chill, despite being kept at bay by the warm tavern walls, has made everyone withdraw into themselves.

Which is why everyone inside notices the two men who walk in, just after nine. Especially when Lily sees them and lets out a small scream from behind the bar.

“ _Tony!_ ” She runs to the taller man and flings her arms around him. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Even from his table, Flint can see Tony is tense and strained as he hugs his sister back. He clings to her before drawing back. “Just wanted to visit,” he says, his smile tight. “Once — once Josie has the baby, it’ll...it’ll be awhile before I’ll have time to come visit.”

“Like we’re not going to be there when she comes,” Lily says, slapping his arm hard. “I’ve decided it’s a girl, by the way.”

Tony’s smile loosens, even as he rubs his arm. “Oh, did you?”

“And if we’re all lucky, she’ll take after Josie.”

“Brat!” But he still looks happy, ruffling her hair roughly.

The shorter man beside Tony coughs, then grins widely when Lily notices him.

“Oh,” says Tony, stiff as an oak once more. “This is — Hector. He’s a friend.”

“Hello,” says Lily politely.

“Can we get some food already?” says Hector, knocking away Lily’s smile. “I’m damned hungry.”

“...Sure,” she says, glaring at Hector and looking just like her mother. “Find a seat.” She gives Tony a stare of his own before heading back to the bar.

Flint takes a long drink from a mostly empty cup while the men sit down nearby. Tony has Lua’s eyes, but a unruly mop of wavy blond hair and large, slender hands better suited for a musician than an accountant. Lily takes more after her mother, but Flint can see the resemblance still.

Hector, however, certainly doesn’t spend his days at a desk like Tony. He’s sunburnt, his red skin peeling under his eyes, and even from afar Flint can smell the brine coming off him like seaspray. He definitely hadn’t been lying about just coming in off a voyage overseas, at any rate. The debt collectors Flint had known before had always been slightly better dressed, but they’d always been rude. So when Hector shouts over to Lily, “And some ale, while you’re at it!” — and then, to Tony, “How long do we have to _wait_ in this hole?” Flint still isn’t sure whether the man is legitimate.

Lily makes a face and goes into the kitchen. When she comes out a moment later, Lua is with her. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to act surprised to see her son. She seems genuinely happy, the first Flint’s ever seen her, and Tony envelops her in a towering hug.

“What are you doing here, Pollito?” Lua asks into his shoulder, which is good, because Flint suddenly can’t remember telling her to play dumb. Which is integral to this whole thing being credible. His heart jumps sickly as he watches, in disbelief at his own mistake, but hopefully either Silver coached her earlier or she knows a thing or two about planning a crime on her own.

Silver suddenly comes out of the kitchen, hair loose but apron fitted tightly around his waist. His smile is pressed equally tight to his face.

“Well, who’s this, Lua?” he asks, coming to stand a little too close behind her.

For the moment, the sad joy at seeing his mother under dire circumstances fades from Tony’s face. He lets Lua go from his hug and squares his shoulders, eyeing Silver with immediate suspicion. _Now_ he looks just like Lua. “Who are _you?_ ” he demands, looking Silver up and down.

“Oh,” says Lua, resting one hand on Tony’s chest and another on Silver’s elbow. “This is just Juan, he’s my cook. He’s also a dear friend of mine. Juan, this is my oldest, Tony.”

Silver looks momentarily caught off guard by _dear friend_ , but he shifts on his crutch so he can hold out his hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Tony squeezes Silver’s hand so tightly his knuckles turn white, but Silver doesn’t even flinch. “I wish I could say the same,” he says, his teeth clenched.

Flint stops paying them any attention and goes back to watching Hector, simultaneously cleaning up his own table. He doesn’t know what Lily’s been told of the events unfolding tonight, but she puts a second bottle of ale down on the table while Hector is still finishing his first. Hector doesn’t notice, though. He’s watching Tony and Lua with nasty amusement and gulping down liquor like a man drowning. Flint can see the scars on his knuckles. There’s a chip missing from his left ear, an odd bent to his nose. He leans one elbow against the back of his chair, content to listen just like Flint. Whether he’s a debt collector or a con man remains to be seen, but Flint knows a fighter when he sees one.

Hector whistles when Lua and Silver head back to the kitchen and Tony finally sits down at the table. Hector hoots so loud others turn to stare at him.

“Is your mother sitting on so much money _everyone’s_ trying to get it out from _under_ her?” Hector laughs.

Tony pales, and he’s even angrier than before. “Shut your mouth,” he hisses, reaching for the other bottle of ale.

But Hector snatches it away from him and begins to pry it open with his teeth, still laughing. “I gotta say, hats off to that man. I guess your options are limited, being a cripple and all, but to plow some old bat just to get at this shitty bar? Not me.” He grins around the cork in his teeth. “Now, little sister on the other hand….”

“You say one more goddamn—” Tony cuts off suddenly, halfway out of his seat.

Hector keeps pressing the flat of his dinner knife into Tony’s belly, still holding the bottle in his other hand. “Careful,” he says, so quietly that only Tony and Flint can hear. “I can take what I want from Mamá over there without you. And then I might just take it from little sister, too. And then afterwards I might just go back and take it from _your wife_. Don’t test me, _Pollito._ ”

The anger flees Tony, and it’s just fear remaining. He sits heavily back in his chair, swallowing a few times before he’s able to speak. “I… I have to go speak to her. She — she doesn’t know why I’m — we’re here.”

“Go tell her then,” Hector says, placing the knife back on the table, and keeping his hand on it. He grins when he adds, “Just don’t go far.”

It takes Tony a minute to stand. Lua’s back on the floor, nervously watching from the bar with Lily. She’s frowning when Tony hurries over and takes her by the shoulder to a quiet corner of the taberna, out of the way but still in sight. Flint can’t hear what they’re saying, but this part, he does know he instructed Lua on. Instead, he watches Hector take his plate of food out of Lily’s hands and start inhaling it without a word, staring at her chest the whole time.

Maybe they should have just put poison in Hector’s paella instead.

Hector keeps his eyes on Lua once Lily leaves, shoveling food into his mouth and Flint prays he just chokes and they can be done with this whole thing. He understands Silver might have been trying to motivate him earlier and give him something positive to think about, but now he’s just anxious to get this whole thing over with.

He must be staring too hard, because Hector suddenly turns to look at him, eyes narrowing.

The candle on Flint’s table is so low, it might as well be unlit. He’s mostly in shadows. He could be anyone, sitting the dark.

Still, Hector is stupid enough to bark, mouth full of food, “What the fuck you think you’re looking at?”

Flint doesn’t say anything, just tips his head and brings his book back up to his face. Hector doesn’t find anything odd about a man reading in the dark, and turns back to Tony and Lua. Flint takes the opportunity to slip into the kitchen, where Silver is waiting, apron already off and ready to go.

 

* * *

 

The one part of the plan Silver had offered an opinion on had been this part.

Flint waits in the tall grass beside the road to Señor Fernandez’s house. Silver is lying face down in the middle of the road.

Silver’s suggestion had been to cover himself in some animal blood or something for this part, to really sell it. He’d been pretty adamant about it, until Flint had pointed out that it would be too dark to see it anyway.

Which, of course, turns out to not be the case. The nearly-full moon shines down obnoxiously on Flint, making him feel exposed as he crouches down further in the weeds.

Cicadas sing. Frogs croak. Flint watches Silver lying in the dirt. He’s wearing three shirts and two jackets for extra warmth, making him look bulkier than normal. His crutch lays close to his face, which is obscured by his hair. His hand is slack around it. He’s wearing a pair of Flint’s trousers, both legs rolled down to give the appearance that there’s two of them.

There’s no way to time this perfectly, and the risk of an all-out brawl meant endangering Lua’s son, too. So they had to be in position, and be patient.

Silver’s been lying in the dirt for nearly twenty minutes, motionless. It takes everything in Flint to not go to him, knowing he’s probably just dozing.

Finally, Flint hears voices, and the clop of horses coming near at a brisk pace. They’d told Lua to say she kept her savings safe with Fernandez, and since Lua had known him for as long as she’d been in St. Augustine, and so Tony had known him all his life, it seemed a believable lie. But Tony hasn’t lived in town for a while now, and doesn’t know Fernandez spent nights before church eating dinner with his daughter and her family, instead of the taberna. So Lua had told Tony he’d be home to meet him and give him the money.

Flint creeps lower in the grass, inching nearer to where Silver lay. He’d cleared a path from himself to the road, removing all the dry leaves and sticks, so Tony and Hector don’t notice him moving when they turn the corner. All they see is the man alone in the middle of the road.

They, thankfully, pull to a sharp stop, about twenty paces from Silver. “What the _fuck_ —”

Silver doesn’t move.

All at once, for no particularly reason, Flint remembers that he _has_ planned a murder like this before. He can’t move, an invisible rope around his neck, because he can’t believe he forgot about the hunt for Thomas’s father. He and Miranda had planned and prepared for that for _months,_ at a time when the guilt felt indistinguishable from how he always felt. The memory of the deed doesn’t fill him with dread, but truthfully the act itself only details his dreams.

What he remembers most is how Miranda held him, after he’d returned.

Flint forces himself to focus, but the memory of her hands on his back, her chin on his shoulder, makes him feel simultaneously confident and unsure. He just wants to walk out there, shoot Hector between the eyes, and hustle Silver out of there so they can go to bed. He’s so tired of lurking in the dark.

The two men stare anxiously at Silver. There’s no horse around, no sign as to how he might have gotten there, or what could have happened to him. He’s just lying there.

“We should help him,” Tony says nervously, sitting back on his horse like he’s preparing to jump down.

“Fuck that,” Hector snarls, tightening his grip on his reins. “We got places to be, and _you_ don’t have the time to—” He stops.

This had been another suggestion from Silver, and it had been a good one. This morning, Silver had taken one of his old rings, the nicer ones he never wore but never wanted to sell. He’d cleaned it, so the gold shines now in the moonlight, on the hand resting on the crutch. But the ruby in it looks black in the night, the color too deep a red to reflect light.

Before they’d ever even met Hector, Silver had known he would not go to help another man. But he’d always go to help himself.

Hector jumps down from his horse. “Well, what do we have here…”

Tony also dismounts, but otherwise doesn’t move. “What are you doing?”

“For an accountant,” Hector says over his shoulder, approaching Silver easily, “you sure as hell don’t know how to make money in this world.”

“Hey,” Tony starts, starting forward. “Don’t—”

Flint creeps out of the grass onto the road. He’s behind them, and they don’t notice them, although Tony’s horse does. It shuffles a little, watching Flint’s approach with caution.

He stands behind Tony silently, gun in hand but held the wrong way. He waits until Hector is beside Silver, crouching down, reaching for the ring. Then Flint, as gently and as quietly as he can, bashes Tony on the back of his head, and catches him under his arm before he crumples to the ground. He does this just as Silver moves — grips the crutch tighter, hooking it around Hector’s ankle, and tugging hard enough to drop him, and then bashes Hector in the nose with it.

Flint carefully lowers Tony to the ground, away from the horses so he doesn’t get mistakenly trampled. He starts to faintly stir, and Flint has to knock him again in the head, whispering, “ _Sorry,_ ” as he does, mostly to Lua, who doesn’t know about this detail in the plan.

When he turns back, he sees Hector is hardier than they’d hoped. He’s wrestling with Silver, the two of them rolling around in the dirt, snarling at each other. The crutch is off to the side out of reach. Silver is on top of him, hands around Hector’s neck, but then Hector swings widely at Silver and manages to catch his jaw, sending him toppling, and now he’s under Hector, who’s raising a fist.

Flint runs over, grabs the crutch and swings it hard with both hands. Much harder than he’d hit Tony. It connects with Hector’s temple, and he falls to the side, off of Silver and into the dirt. He doesn’t get up again.

Silver sits up on his hands, breathing hard. His leg is still tangled with Hector’s. His lip is bleeding at the corner. He and Flint stare at each other for a moment, trying to remember the next steps.

He doesn’t know about Silver, but this definitely isn’t Flint’s smoothest abduction.

Flint helps him stand, still holding onto Silver’s crutch. They have two unconscious men to deal with, but Flint takes the time to brush the dirt and blood away from Silver’s face. Silver lets him. He bends down and ties the empty pant leg so it doesn’t drag.

Then he goes back to the grass where he’d been hiding and unties Lua’s horse, bringing it and its cart up to the road. They hadn’t trusted Solomon to be able to tug three people. They also hadn’t trusted Solomon not to wander off right when they needed him. He’s spending the night with Lua instead.

Silver shakes off one of the extra coats and throws it into the cart. He grabs a handful of rope and a burlap sack and sets about tying Hector up.

Flint checks on Tony. He’s still unconscious in the dirt, but his head is barely bleeding, and Flint decides he’ll be alright. He ties up Tony’s horse to a nearby tree, and then slaps Hector’s on the rear, watching it disappear down the road and into the night with a distressed whinny and a cloud of dirt.

He pulls out his pocket watch. They don’t really have any idea when Fernandez will be coming along, but his daughter tries to make sure he’s home early enough so he isn’t tired for church. It’s just after nine.

Silver’s got the sack over Hector’s head, a rope around his neck to secure it, and his hands bound behind his back. He’s working on tying a knot around his ankles when once again, they hear the sound of hoofbeats, coming down the road.

Silver stands up quickly, and Flint grabs Hector by the arms and pulls him up. His feet hang limply under him, and Flint has to drag him over, his back twinging when he throws him into the back of the cart. Silver is already sitting in the front, looking over his shoulder at the road, which is still empty. He extends a hand to Flint and pulls him up, handing over the reins.

In the back, Hector starts to shift, groaning under the sack. Silver turns swiftly in his seat and punches Hector square in the face, the ring on his finger connecting right where his nose should be. The crunch is loud in the night, as is the sound of Hector falling backwards, still once more. A few spots of blood seep out of the center of the sack. Then there’s only silence, except for the sound of someone else approaching in the distance.

Silver turns to Flint, eyebrows raised. Flint nods, pulls on the reins, and leads the horse and cart into the woods, away from the road, away from Tony and his soon-to-be savior, away from the moonlight. He leads them straight into the dark.

 

* * *

 

They ride for an hour through dense forest, the signs of an early bustling night the only sounds that follow them. Flint has a vague idea of where they’re headed, the basic notion being someplace where there wouldn’t be any people for miles. Eventually, they come to a small clearing, with a small cliff, overlooking a small stream. Flint has studied a map for this area, and he knows the stream eventually widens to a river, which eventually leads to the ocean.

Hector hadn’t made another noise along the way, despite the bumpy ride. Flint and Silver, wanting to keep quiet too, hadn’t spoken a word the whole way except to point out clearer paths.

Now, though.

“It’s a bad idea,” Silver says for the fifth time, his arms folded. “Anyone could hear it.”

They’re still sitting up front in the cart. Flint looks down at the pistol hanging limply in his hand. “There’s no one around to hear it, that’s the whole point.”

“And you only have one shot,” Silver says. “What if you miss? What if he doesn’t go down with one? By the time you’ve reloaded, he could be on you.”

“Silver, he’s outnumbered, tied up, and unconscious. I could be blind and still hit him. But when I shoot a man, he _always_ stays down.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t _snort_ at me.”

“When was the last time you even used that thing? It might not even fire.”

“It’ll _fire._ I know how to take care of my weapons.”

“It’s got _rust_.”

“Fuck you, it does not.”

“I’m just saying.” Silver unsheathes his knife. It’s large, gleaming in the night like his eyes. “This’ll be better, cleaner —”

“That is _not cleaner_. Do you know how much a knife wound bleeds?”

“What? _Yeah_. Of _course_ I do. Since when are you so bloody squeamish?”

“I’m not—”

“I once saw you bash a man’s head in with a cannonball.”

“Yeah, and it made a _mess_. I’m not squeamish. I just want there to be as little evidence as possible.”

“I can cut a man’s throat without getting a drop of blood on me, you watch.”

“The gun is safer!”

“I knew it. I knew it! You think I can’t do this, is that it? You still see me as that hapless little cook. Well, I’ll you know, _Farmer_ Flint, I was a fearsome, dreaded pirate captain on my own, same as you, for _six_ years and —”

“Five and a _half_.”

At that moment, Hector stumbles.

It happens out the corner of their eyes, and they both turn to watch him, falling silent.

Hector still has the sack over his head, his hands still tied behind his back. He shuffles blindly, slowly, trying not to lift his feet off the ground too high. He moves his head wildly, listening, but he has no way to balance himself without his hands. He doesn’t make a sound, trying to be stealthy. He doesn’t even notice he’s slipping over the side of the cliff until he’s almost gone from view. A brief scream is quickly cut off by a loud crack.

They continue to stare at the place Hector the debt collector had just stood. Then, for no particular reason, they both look at the back of the cart. All that’s there is Silver’s extra jacket, and the rope that had meant to be binding Hector’s feet.

Flint picks it up. “God, Silver,” he says. “You tie the worst fucking knots.”

They climb out of the cart and approach the edge of the cliff. It’s a generous term for it. It’s really just a small rocky ledge in the middle of the woods, about ten feet above the stream. If the water had been deeper, it might have been a fun place for kids to swim, jumping from up high into the cool relief from summer. Instead, despite the rains earlier that week, down below is mostly rock, with some water trickling through. A healthy man, with all his wits about him, as well as his eyesight, might be able to jump down and only twist an ankle.

The moon is bright, high in the sky, with not a cloud in sight. So when they peer over the edge, Hector is clearly visible. Even with the sack still on, they can see his head hanging from his neck at an angle more appropriate for a wide open door. The only movement is the water pushing against his body. Once again, black blood soaks quickly through the sack on his head until it’s almost completely saturated. He’s half-submerged in the stream, and as they watch, the water gently tugs him loose from the rocks until he slowly starts to drift downstream.

They watch for a while, until Hector is completely out of view.

Silver turns to Flint. “Can we go home now?”

 

* * *

 

They decided on the way home to let Lua know tomorrow how it all went, and to retrieve Solomon.

It’s not so cold inside their house tonight, which must mean the weather is warming up again. They don’t bother to light a fire. They just go right into bed. First, Flint lights some candles. He’s tired of the blue-white of moonlight.

Silver is over him, once again in one of Flint’s nightshirts, because it still isn’t warm enough for him. His head is bent back, so all Flint can see is neck. Which is fine by him. He wants to lean up and kiss it, but he needs to concentrate on helping Silver slide down onto his cock. His hands are still slick with oil underneath the nightshirt, squeezing his ass as he guides Silver. Focusing on his neck helps Flint stay _still._

Silver lets out a long, heavy breath when he’s fully seated, staring wildly at the ceiling. “Christ,” he gasps, “you feel so _warm_.”

Flint gives in, leans up, and pulls him closer by the neck. He’s ready to _move_ , but he has to make sure Silver is ready.

So when Silver says, “Wait,” Flint isn’t surprised. “Let me just… let me just feel you for a moment.”

Silver does this sometimes. He likes the weight of Flint hard and hot in him. There’s too much to feel when Flint’s actively fucking him, and sometimes he needs to just feel the stretch, the pressure, the heat of Flint. He just wants to hold him from the inside.

Flint lies back down, but brings Silver with him, lips still on his neck. Silver’s breathes in sharply at the sudden movement, hands tight in his hair, but then neither of them move yet. When they’d first started, these moments had felt like torture to Flint. Now it just feels warm and tight and strangely — _safe,_ for lack of a better word. Like there’s nothing else when they’re like this, when they’re one.

Silver’s face is warm against his chin, his whole body trembling, and he murmurs into Flint’s collar, “That didn’t… go well tonight.”

Flint hums, sliding his hands up Silver’s back and making him twitch. “It could have gone worse,” he says.

Silver doesn’t say anything, and then he says, “We used to be better at that sort of thing.”

“We got it done,” Flint says, tracing the indents of his spine. “And we don’t have to do it again.”

“Yeah,” says Silver, fingers curling around Flint’s ears. “I guess we really have changed.” But he doesn’t sound all that happy about it.

Flint’s hands stop moving. He leans back, eyebrows raised.

Silver sighs, and it sounds more like he does when Flint asks him to pick up the oranges that have dropped from the trees overnight, and not like a man with a cock in him. “I just,” he bows his head, resting on Flint’s chin. “I’ve changed so many times in my life. But each change had been one I’ve chosen myself, a conscious decision. I’d been an active participant in it. Now I’ve changed, and I never even _noticed_ it. It happened when I wasn’t even looking. I don’t… I don’t know how I feel about that, is all.”

Flint had thought he’d been a different man, by the time Silver had showed up one morning, asleep in his chair. But he can see now it isn’t true. He’d been the same man he’d always been, just without a gun in his hand. He’d been haunted, cold, unfeeling. No regard for the people around him, stuck in a past he could never acknowledge, like a fly caught in a web without being able to look at the spider. He’d thought he’d been unrecognizable, but Silver had seen him in plain sight.

He removes one hand from Silver’s back to cup his cheek. When Silver’s eyes are on him, he asks, “When was the last time you lied to me?”

Silver blinks. “What?”

“When was the last time you lied to me? Tell me.”

Silver looks at him for a long moment, before he lowers his eyes again. His eyelashes brush against Flint’s hand. “Yesterday morning,” he admits softly. “When I said I didn’t want you to kiss me in that moment. I did.” He looks back up at Flint. “When was the last time you were truly angry?”

“Earlier tonight,” Flint says without thinking. “When I saw that man hit you.” He touches the corner of SIlver’s lip where he’d been struck. Silver nips at his thumb. “See? We’re not so changed after all.”

Silver smiles around his thumb. Then he sits up suddenly with a roll of his hips, squeezing tight around Flint’s cock and making his vision shudder. “Some changes,” Silver says lowly, “I’m fine with.”

Then he slowly starts to fuck himself, Flint's nails digging into his thighs are he rises and falls at an even pace. The ties on the nightshirt are loose, and it hangs off one shoulder. His breath hitches with every shallow thrust Flint is able to make, his hair curtaining his face but not hiding his crooked grin as he watches for Flint’s every reaction. He braces himself on Flint’s ribs with both bruised hands, refusing to speed up.

And perhaps it’s the evening’s events, or their conversation, or Silver’s pace that harkens back to Flint’s slowest, most painful days at sea, but Flint can’t keep still any longer. He’s truly a changed man now, but not _so_ different, and he’s never been good about yielding command.

He slides his hands up Silver’s back, which is the only warning he gives before gripping him tight and rolling them over. Silver’s eyes widen at the full weight and heat of Flint now on top of him and pushing inside, the heel of his foot pressing sharply into Flint’s ass as he lifts up to meet him. Flint kisses him and pushes his nightshirt up all the way to his neck, so he can see the flush and sweat of Silver’s panting chest. He gets his hand around Silver’s cock, gets another one under Silver’s knee to angle him just right, and strokes him in that perfect non-rhythm that makes Silver weak.

Because they can evolve a hundred times over until they’re completely new, but Silver will still always be whispering or crying or gasping, “Fuck, yes, _Captain.”_ It will always tumble off of Silver’s tongue and onto his own, the word forever to be thrown off-hand stuck inside a softened insult, or murmured into the bright flesh of a freshly-picked orange, or pressed wetly into the slide of Flint’s neck.

As long as he has Silver, Flint will have someone to remind him who he is.

 

* * *

 

There’s a knock on the door at dawn. It drags Flint from a dreamless sleep like a fish caught on a line. He keeps his eyes closed though, because it’s highly unlikely whatever is happening is something he wants to deal with. The grayish haze behind his eyelids means it’s not time to rise yet, and every sailor learns early on to abide by the sun.

He feels a kiss on his jaw, and arms around him pulling away. The bed shifts, and then goes still.

He lays there, listening. The voices never rise above a murmur, and a few minutes later, Silver is back.

“Lua came to return Solomon,” he says softly, pressing himself against Flint’s back again. “She said not to be late for church today.”

Flint snorts, edging back into him. “Is that all?”

“She also said if we gave her son permanent brain damage, she’d poison us both.”

Flint tilts his head up on his pillow, and Silver’s face burrows immediately into his neck. The arm around his waist tightens, and Flint starts to drift off again.

“She also said thank you,” Silver says quietly into his ear.

“For what?” Flint mumbles, but he’s asleep before he can hear the answer.

 

* * *

 

They sleep through church. Or at least Flint does. He’s alone when he wakes up again, his feet hot from the sun streaming directly on them. From that positioning, it means he’s slept well through the morning.

Flint sits up, breathing deep, the citrus fragrance hanging heavier today, it seems. It’s neither hot nor cold, the air crisp and sweet, a stronger breeze than normal coming through the open window.

He gets up, puts on a pair of trousers from the floor. They’re Silver’s, it turns out, although he doesn’t realize until he’s put his foot through the stitching of the shortened left leg. He slides them on anyway, despite that side stopping at the knee. He’ll fix it later tonight.

He finds Silver on the back porch, drinking a cup of tea. He’s in Flint’s nightshirt still. It’s a little longer on him, the edge brushing against his bare thighs in the breeze. His stump is exposed, healed by the winter air.

He’s watching Solomon, untied, chew on some grass. A couple of the stray cats leap at his tail, which swishes back and forth lazily like the insides of a grandfather clock winding down to a stop. Solomon doesn’t acknowledge the cats, even when one manages to catch his tail and bite down. The lucky cat is quickly taken down by Don Pablos, who leaps on the cat’s back until it falls back into the dirt. She drags the other cat down with one front paw and all her teeth, growling ferociously.

Silver sips his tea calmly, like a man taking in an opera. His knuckles are red and split, but not permanently so. He knows Flint is there, but he doesn’t move until Flint comes up beside him, and only then it’s to lean back into him.

He hands Flint his cup, and even though he still puts a disgusting amount of sugar into it, Flint takes a sip. He only winces a little.

Silver smiles at him, it unfurling on his face like a book with a page torn from the center. It lays open naturally, expectantly, waiting to be discovered.

The small bruise on Silver’s chin is barely visible beneath his dark beard. “How are you feeling?” Flint asks, lowering the teacup and wondering if he can subtly dump the rest out. 

Don Pablos’s growl becomes a shriek as the larger cat gets loose and smacks him in the face. Solomon wanders away while the cats are distracted to eat some oranges off the ground, that had fallen in the night. Silver tips his head back, so it rests on Flint’s shoulder.

“I feel like a bath,” he says. “Don’t you?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love you, follow me on [tumblr](http://vowel-in-thug.tumblr.com) if you're not already!


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